Blame game that drove Faria to sell her secrets

She has kept her counsel for more than two weeks. While the FA sex scandal grew from a small local difficulty to a full-blown crisis, the secretary at the centre of it all said nothing.

But now Faria Alam is about to break her silence. However shocking it may be for the FA, the news that Ms Alam has signed up the king of the sleazy buy-ups, Max Clifford, had a certain inevitability about it. With each day that has passed since the story of her affair with Sven-Goran Eriksson first broke, Ms Alam, 38, has felt increasingly let down and betrayed.

The crunch came after the grilling she received at the hands of Peter Norbury, the solicitor appointed by the FA. While Eriksson came out of his own meeting with Mr Norbury confident that he had seen off his critics, Ms Alam was left feeling that she was being blamed for everything.

The impression she was given was that she was the real culprit, while Eriksson and Mark Palios had done nothing wrong (Palios, of course, only resigned for his part in the attempted stitch-up of Eriksson).

Ironically, the only man to have behaved decently is, in her view, Eriksson himself, who has taken care to keep in contact with Ms Alam.

So, step forward Max Clifford. With his help, she should be able to negotiate a series of deals that should gross well over ?500,000 - some recompense for the likely demise of her career with the FA.

The big money-spinners will be stories in two Sunday tabloids, which could be worth ?200,000 each. A big television interview - possibly with Sir Trevor McDonald or Sky TV - would be worth another ?75,000. Magazine interviews could be worth up to ?50,000 - not forgetting the money from media rights in Sweden and football-crazy Asia.

She has supposedly spent the last 10 days weighing up whether to go public or not. But she would have had to be a remarkably strong-willed - and self-sacrificing - woman to have kept silent: any delay may have been as much about negotiation and gameplaying as moral agonising.

The crucial question is what Ms Alam will have to say. There will, of course, be plenty of salacious sexual details - although Ms Alam does not feel any bitterness towards Eriksson she will be unable to tell her story without saying what they got up to.

Her big problem is how she will explain her role in the initial coverup. When the story first broke, the FA issued a statement on her behalf saying she had denied the affair: if she really did lie to them she would have to take some of the blame for what has happened since.

What is worrying the FA is what else she has to say about the internal workings of the organisation. If the procedures at Soho Square are not seen to be completely above board and professional, the FA's reputation may sink even lower. Heads may roll.

As it stands, several careers hang in the balance: Eriksson looks safest of all, but executive director David Davies is under pressure, as is chairman Geoff Thompson. Communications director Colin Gibson, who offered the News of the World details of Eriksson's affair with Ms Alam if it would omit Palios from its story, has offered his resignation, which has been privately accepted and is expected to be announced today.