A nation expects as young gun Theo bids to justify the hype

Amid prophecies of world domination and bookmakers offering odds on a 10-goal thrashing, a laboured 2-0 win over Albania at a packed St James' Park proved the anti-climactic follow-up to what felt at the time a watershed for the national game. The only saving grace? Michael Owen, the hat-trick hero of that triumph in the Olympiastadion, living up to the mad hype with another lovely goal.

There may be a few echoes of that Newcastle night at Wembley on Saturday, with the national team set for their most expectant homecoming bash for seven years following the astounding win in Croatia. Only, of course, ironically at the dawn of what now could be the post-Owen era under Fabio Capello, the starring role has been usurped by the three-goal magician of Zagreb.

It is going to be tough for young Walcott. Common sense tells us that sober voices like those of Capello, John Terry and Arsene Wenger need to be heeded to protect a 19-year-old kid from wild and unrealistic expectations.

"We must not start saying it is all down to him," booms Terry, keen to remind us of the likes of that ancient 22-year-old Wayne Rooney, too. All eminently sensible but the problem is that now a nation has been given a glimpse of just how this boy can take seasoned international defenders to school with such a rare brand of skill at pace, it is hard not to drool over the thought of how he ought on Saturday to be able to perform those quicksilver dances through the defence of Kazakhstan, the 120th ranked team in the world.

What excites most about Theo is not how good he is but the prospect of how good he could be. It's as Frank Lampard noted at the team hotel in Watford yesterday: "Theo's gone up to another level this season but there are plenty more levels to come. From now he can be as good as he wants to be.

"He's very good but he can be even better because he's so young. He's got so much pace, he's fearless, he can beat people and he's showed he can score goals too - and that's great for Theo because he's been talked about for such a long time from a young age that there's always been pressure on him. Now he's shown what he can do, that's got to be fantastic for his confidence."

Many older hands in the squad noted how Walcott's coming of age on the pitch appeared to coincide with a flowering of his confidence in the team room too in Croatia. At Arsenal, keeper Manuel Almunia was also remarking last weekend how the nice teenager has been "growing up" and developing a more aggressive edge.

Since Zagreb, one suspects that growing-up process has had to accelerate.

Almost overnight, as the treatment dished out to him by Dynamo Kiev's Andriy Nesmachniy in the Champions League game with Arsenal seemed to illustrate, it was as if he'd had targets drawn on his shins.

His Croatian tour de force can only have alerted every manager and defender in the top flight of European football; the secret of why Sven-Goran Eriksson wanted to take a 16-year-old to the World Cup had at last been revealed. And so all the tests and the questions for Walcott actually only begin right now. The lad still evidently has his doubters, those like Chris Waddle who today suggested that his game was currently based so much more on speed rather than trickery that defenders will have found him out by next season. Indeed, the former England star hopes Capello will drop Walcott if he feels it comes down to a straight choice between him and the recalled Shaun Wright-Phillips.

The Manchester City man has been in excellent form but, in the Arsenal games Walcott has played since Zagreb, though he may not have scored or produced anything quite as spectacular, he was still fine against Blackburn, Bolton and Porto, made the equaliser in Kiev and created another in the defeat by Hull. Even during his undeniably poor outing against Sunderland last Saturday, he made another goal assist, which was incorrectly ruled out.

So, though as Capello has never stopped drumming into us, Walcott naturally can't be the model of consistency at 19, the one consistent thread in those six post-Zagreb games is he has conjured up at least one potentially match-changing moment. Whatever Waddle's reservations, he is undroppable right now.

What has impressed Walcott's international team-mates most is the assured way he has continued to deal with all the inevitable hoopla. "He appears to handle it very well," said Lampard. "In Arsene Wenger he's got a fantastic mentor at club level and he seems to have a really solid head on his shoulders.

"He's got his girlfriend and family around him and that all helps because the media invasion of your life outside football can be a real issue these days. He's got the right people to look after him and that all allows him to just concentrate on his football."

Capello just warns us: "I said after Croatia that everyone would be waiting for the same performance from Theo but it's not possible". It was a nice try but he can't really believe that. Why is it not possible? The man who let the genie out of the lamp in the first place can't expect to put the lid back on now.