Profile: Adam Crozier

The Royal Mail's Adam Crozier was former head of the FA

Adam Crozier, chief executive of the Royal Mail, seems to have made a habit of taking on difficult jobs.

Most people will know him best as the recent chief of the Football Association.

There, he was the man who hired Sven-Goran Eriksson and fell out with club chairmen over the way the game should be run.

Mr Crozier, also a former head of advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi, took over as Royal Mail chief executive earlier this year.

He has described his brief at the troubled company as carrying out the "biggest corporate turnaround programme in the UK".

He holds particular responsibility for revamping the group's marketing operations.

FA history

When appointed to the FA in early 2000, Crozier was a surprise choice.

The then 35-year-old had no experience of the business side of football, yet was effectively charged with running the English game - to the dismay of some FA officials.

In two-and-a-half years in the job, Crozier tried to revolutionise the way the game was run.

He stepped into the FA and saw an outdated, unfashionable institution that needed to catch up with the modern game.

He immediately set about trying to make the FA a more effective and financially-driven company.

However, the radical nature of his task meant he was always going to step on toes.

Sven success

The men behind football in England were resistant to change, with some, including Chelsea chairman Ken Bates, vehemently opposing almost every idea the Scot came up with.

But Crozier overcame public opinion to appoint Sven-Goran Eriksson as England's first foreign coach, a move that proved, at least initially, a huge success.

The pair had such a close working relationship that rumours of Crozier's position being under threat were met by Eriksson revealing he would have to carefully consider his own position.

Crozier also transformed the previously impenetrable inner sanctum of the FA and indeed moved the whole operations from Lancaster Gate to brand new open-plan offices in Soho Square.

The average age of staff at the FA went from 55 to 32 in Crozier's time.

Inevitable backlash

And he made the FA richer than it had ever been before, finally getting it to be run like a commercial operation.

However, the inevitable backlash eventually came.

Mr Crozier scrapped the FA's 91-strong board which previously made decisions and replaced it with a 12-member committee as the organisation's ruling body.

This led to some people at the increasingly powerful Premier League arguing that Crozier was acting beyond his powers. and making decisions without consulting either them or his own FA officials.

And despite making more money for the Premiership clubs, many were unhappy that he regularly failed to consult them.

The affable chief executive's detractors eventually seemed to outnumber his supporters.