Having long departed from his position as a highly thought of football manager, Sven Goran Eriksson emerged this week as the mercenary captain of a band of pirates.

The news represents an innovative, yet not entirely surprising move on the part of the mysteriously alluring, money-driven Swede.

After losing his job at the helm of the Mexican national team in early 2009, having spent a year cashing cheques and chasing the well manicured ladies of the Ipanema, Eriksson more recently acted as the public face of Munto Finance, a company that somehow convinced the football world that pumping millions of pounds into Notts County represented a sound financial investment.

Now, however, it seems Eriksson has continued his desperate grab for easy money and exotic females by accepting an offer to captain a ship of men off the coast of West Africa. It is believed that the pirates have sailed without structured leadership up until this point, but are hoping that Eriksson will be able to lead them to success as they expand their plundering into the South African region of the continent.

In a statement released yesterday by his agent Eriksson stated that the pirates he had become involved with were of the”highest moral order” comparing them to previous associates Pini Zahavi and and Thaksin Shinawatra and saying that he looked forward to “manning the ship for a short while, accepting a disproportionate percentage of the looted booty and leading the men blindly into battle before abandoning them for the sake of quick squueze with a merchant port wench.”

Speaking to the press from his new ship, Eriksson explained his new choice of employment: “The pirates have simple wants. Money, sex, gold and to be involved in a highly suspicious activity that isn’t governed by the land-locked rules of the real world. John Terry will tell you that is basically the same as footballers.”