1 Faria Alam and the FA Not to be confused with “farrier”, a person who shoes horses, the name Faria will forever signify sex and scandal in English football. Alam, a perfectly groomed former model, joined the FA as a PA in 2003 and quickly began affairs with England coach Sven-Göran Eriksson and Mark Palios, who was then the association’s chief executive. When Palios arrived at the FA it was with the clear promise to “clean up” football — so he had no option but to resign when details emerged of his liaison and a botched FA offer to newspapers to discredit Eriksson in return for protecting Palios. Alam, who is suing for constructive dismissal in a high-profile case that has dragged all parties through the mud once again, also claims to have been sexually harassed by her former boss, David Davies, the FA’s executive director. Davies strenuously denies the allegations.
2 David Beckham and the Loos woman “Not David!” wept Englishwomen. “Not with her . . . ” thought Englishmen. Rebecca Loos, a diplomat’s daughter who was employed by Beckham’s former management company to look after his needs in Madrid, took her job description a little too literally. After a nightclub canoodle, they started a relationship that Loos was quoted as saying featured “the most explosive sex I’ve ever had”. Soon, though, she “felt like a whore, really cheap and used” when Beckham dumped her. A fat cheque from The News of the World eased her pain somewhat and she furnished the paper with full, steamy details of the affair and her bisexual background. Cryptic transcripts of text messages between the pair became required reading. Loos hit the head lines again when she got hands-on to extract semen from a pig on a TV reality show, and was then cast away with other (very) minor celebrities in Celebrity Love Island. Sadly for those who hoped that she had been given a one-way ticket, the public voted her off.
3 Wayne Rooney and the ‘Auld Slapper’ At least Rooney knows how to “keep it real”. When the £20m striker visited a brothel in a shabby Liverpool backstreet and was asked by a fellow punter “What are YOU doing here?” he memorably replied: “Same as you, la’.” The tale was told in a tabloid exclusive which alleged that Rooney had frequented the seedy establishment several times and paid £45 for sex, once with a grandmother dubbed “Auld Slapper” by fellow prostitutes. The story ran weeks after the same paper printed other revelations about the England star and hookers. Charlotte Glover, a prostitute, claimed Rooney paid her £140 for sex in the bathroom of a grimy flat in December 2002 and even signed a note: “To Charlotte, I shagged U on 28 Dec, loads of love, Wayne Rooney.”
4 Tommy Docherty and the physio’s wife In July 1977 Tommy Docherty was at his peak, having just led Manchester United to victory over Liverpool in the FA Cup final as well as having shaken hands on a new four-year contract at Old Trafford. Then details emerged of his affair with Mary Brown, wife of Laurie Brown, the United physio. Docherty, married with four children, was sacked and his career hit the skids. He is still with Mary and grew to rationalise his downfall with trademark humour. When visiting the dressing room at non-league Altrincham in 1987, he turned to Jeff Warburton, the club physio, and asked with a mischievous smile: “How’s the wife?”
5 Stan Collymore and dogging Hey Stan, what are you doing? Just doggin’ mate. Wicked, nice one . . .
In February 2004 Collymore, who dubbed himself “International Lover”, to the derision of teammates at Crystal Palace, was trapped by undercover reporters in a car park indulging in “dogging” — the practice of meeting up with strangers to observe or participate in sex in cars. Perhaps it was his Range Rover’s personalised number plates that had given Collymore away. “I ’m not a freak,” proclaimed the ex-Liverpool and Aston Villa — among many others — striker, but a promising media career was ruined as he checked into Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous.
6 Malcolm Allison and the porn star Allison’s shenanigans were as various as the clubs he managed. Highlights included a liaison with Christine Keeler, marrying a Playboy Bunny and fathering six children by three partners. But topping the lot was the scandal that cost him his job at Crystal Palace in 1976, weeks after taking the Third Division side to the FA Cup semi-finals. When porn star Fiona Richmond visited Selhurst Park, Allison invited her to join him and his team in the home dressing room’s communal bath. Photos of the X-rated actress and the naked football boss earned Allison an FA disrepute charge. “I felt she’d been working very hard,” Big Mal explained. Richmond told her story in her autobiography, Tell Tale Tits.
7 Martin Edwards and the Ladies’ Toilets When you’re a multi-millionaire world traveller and chairman of a football club that has just won the European Cup, what is left that could still thrill you? Space travel? Perhaps. Ascending Everest? Maybe. Grabbing a quick glimpse of ankle as you kneel on all fours, desperately craning your neck to peer under a ladies’ toilet cubicle? Now you’re talking! In perhaps the most pathetic football sex scandal of all, Edwards was cautioned by police after allegedly spying on a middle-aged woman in a health club toilet in Cheshire.
8 Dwight Yorke, Mark Bosnich and the cross-dressing Champagne, men in dresses, the crack of leather on hide . . . it might be an acceptable scenario if Eddie Izzard were performing at a gymkhana, but not if you’re two footballers in a bedroom with four women and you have rigged up a camera to secretly record the event. Yorke and Bosnich filmed an orgy at Yorke’s house in 1998. The tape (“discovered” in Yorke’s dustbin by a newspaper) showed Yorke having sex with one woman while Bosnich, wearing a skirt, got another to whip him.
9 Freddy Shepherd and Douglas Hall It wasn’t so much that the Newcastle directors were caught groping a prostitute or that they paid to watch a lesbian show in a Marbella brothel. What really scandalised the northeast when Hall and Shepherd fell victim to a classic tabloid sting were their comments about their football club and the people of their home city. Secretly recorded in conversation at the brothel, the Toon two boasted of their globe-trotting sexual exploits and branded Geordie women “dogs”.
10 Andy Goram and Olga Orbs The Scottish goalkeeper, who walked out of the 1998 World Cup after tabloids exposed him as a “Glove Rat” for getting a girlfriend pregnant while being engaged to another woman, had affairs with a retired porn actress and a 17-year-old “model”. In 1997 he bedded Louise Montgomery, dubbed Olga Orbs for her 38D figure.
