POWELL: England is now a second-world football nation

They saw the light just as their forefathers had been shown the old game in all its new and beautiful possibilities over half a century before.

Suddenly they understood what men with long memories had been telling them about the November day in 1953 when Ferenc Puskas and his Magyars came to Wembley and played football with a deftness of touch and a flourish of genius never before contemplated in this, the birthplace of the world game.

That was at the old Wembley.

Come this Wednesday evening, it was Croatia's turn to light up the new Wembley with football of such a high technical order that the English once again looked like Luddites trapped in the dark recesses of the industrial revolution.

It was Steve McClaren's good fortune — yes, luck is comparative — that the scale of the loss was not as crushing as England's first, historic defeat by non-British opposition on this once hallowed but now crumbling acre of turf in north-west London.

Hungary won 6-3, then went on to compound that seismic result with a 7-1 aftershock in Budapest six months later.

Croatia triumphed 3-2 but it could easily have been six or seven.

The comparisons of quality are identical. Here, for all to witness, was the same yawning gulf in technical skills, a similar disparity in incisive movement, the equally embarrassing difference between sophisticated European intelligence and a typically chronic failure of English education.

For recent generations of football followers, being comprehensively outclassed by Croatia will come as an even greater surprise than the home defeat which has denied England access to the finals of a major championship.

To those of us old enough to have grown weary of the blinkered English refusal to recognise the need for reform and modernisation, this comes as the end to an interminable and agonised wait beside the bedside for a long-suffering relative to succumb to a terminal illness.

Down the four decades of decay which have followed the solitary World Cup glory of 1966, we have watched the FA preside over the blinkered arrogance of English football.

Whenchairman GeoffThompson announces a root and branch examination of the structure of the national team operation, he is a rabbit trapped in the headlights of the national game's irrationally bloated ego.

What he should be calling for is a tree and forest revision of English football in its entirety.

Frankly, I am now past caring whether the new manager comes from England or Mars. The concept of this country being one of the major World Cup powers, for whom it would be a disgrace to hire a foreign mercenary, has given way to admission that this is now a second-world football nation.

Nor is the identity of the next head on the chopping block of over-riding importance. At best, Martin O'Neill, Jose Mourinho, Jurgen Klinsmann, Frank Rijkaard, Harry Redknapp or Steve Coppell can only offer a short-term fix.

The long game is not the one which saw English players belting the ball the soggy length of the Wembley pitch in the hope of locating the Crouching Tower of Peter: it is to establish academies of technical excellence at which hitherto football-illiterate English youngsters can receive a degree education from coaches who have completed their studies at the higher universities of the international game.

This seminal moment has been delayed by the capacity of England's players to overcome more gifted opponents by sheer will and brute force. By physical effort alone, they have won games they should have lost.

There was no shortage of that commitment on Wednesday. How easy it is to cite the gigantic incomes of the modern players as the explanation for their failures; and how facile.

None of them wanted to be embarrassed by Croatians advertising how much more they would deserve to earn if they drummed up a transfer to England.

The problem was not that England played from their pockets, but that they played with their hearts instead of their heads.

Hoisting long, high balls in frantic pursuit of that moribund tactic was as lumpen as it was suicidal.

Money is not so much a problem with the players as with the moguls of the Premier League.

Too many leading club directors — key members of whom were in disproportionately powerful evidence on the gallows as McClaren was executed yesterday morning — have England as their ego trip, not their priority.

As they had no shame in ' admitting, far from volunteering to operate a unilateral limit on the number of foreigners they recruit, the mega-clubs excuse their need to hire marquee celebrities from overseas as essential if they are recoup their lavish financial investments.

These hypocrites are paying lip service to England while closing their doors to English potential.

Someone should warn them how easily they might get caught in their own money trap.

If they bankrupt England of home-grown talent, they risk their own destitution.

Already, most of the clubs below the gang of four Champions League giants are playing to partially empty stadia.

Wembley risks becoming an albatross around English football's neck if the national team of bulging muscularity can no longer bully its opponents.

Now that smaller nations like Croatia have caught up physically, the game is up.

There was a time when English coaches were sent abroad as missionaries. Now, after years of reliance on strength and long ball statistics, they are prophets without honour in their own land.

Be honest, who would you rather have had playing for our national pride on Wednesday: Croatia's unheralded technicians or England's headless chickens?

Not so much up and under, as over and out of Euro 2008.