As David Beckham was leaving the Stade de France, he was asked whether maybe his wave to the England fans at the end of the game had been one of farewell. His face was a picture of indignation. "No, it was just a thank you to them," he said, clearly somewhat bemused as to why people were immediately ready to retire him as soon as his big night was over.

For even if his 100th appearance for England was mediocre and anti-climactic - a booking, defeat and a failure to convert his single half-chance suggested he must have left his usual melodramatic scriptwriting team back in Hollywood - he wasn't about to let us even toy with the idea that his innings was over.

"I want to carry on," he wanted everyone to know. "I don't know where the rumours have come from about me stopping. It's still one hundred not out as far as I am concerned."

That seemed fair enough. He hadn't been great but then who in a red shirt had? At least, as on 99 other occasions you could mention, he offered commitment and zeal. And when you recall glumly the poverty of English attacking on an evening when French keeper Gregory Coupet was not forced to make a single save of note, one early, teasing whipped cross delivered by a golden right boot was about as near to a highlight that there was.

So while it may have been far from his finest hour, at least the old tryer did enough in 62 minutes to merit the lump-in-the-throat ovation he received from not only the Eurostar day trippers but also the otherwise monastic home crowd when he was substituted.

"I never dreamed this day would happen," he marvelled.

Team-mates and opposition alike wanted to pay tribute. The England players all signed a shirt for him, Gareth Barry hailed him as a "legend" while William Gallas, with whom Beckham recently trained at Arsenal, led the acclamation from Les Bleus.

"I've got to know him and I know it means a lot to him so I just wanted to go up to him at the end and say congratulations because I think what he's done for English football has been great," said the Gunners skipper. "I hope for him he wins many more [caps] - and I think he will."

It was when Gallas outlined his own ambition to reach the three-figure landmark that it put the achievement in perspective.

"To win 100 caps for a big country, you cannot know how difficult it is," said a 30-year-old who's slogged on the international beat for years yet still needs another 39 caps to make the ton.

Certainly, the signs from Capello afterwards were that his old Real Madrid soldier, with whom he was conversing in Spanish in the touchline last night, may get the chance to go after Bobby Moore's record for an England outfield player of 108 caps.

"I only substituted him because I already know him very well and I wanted to see other players. He plays because he deserves to play," was the manager's riposte to anyone thinking Beckham had been selected as a ceremonial one-off.

Yet, amid all the merited accolades, watching Beckham labouring so feverishly to make something, anything, happen for a side so devoid of fluidity, creativity and pace felt a little dispiriting. We'd been here before. Of course, patience is needed - after all, even Capello's Roma wasn't built in a day either - but this seemed less like a brave new world and more like back to the future.

Beckham reckoned he was most pleased with his fitness considering that his US season hasn't begun yet but the suspicion wasn't allayed here that, at 32, his remarkable engine simply can't ferry him up and down the field as ceaselessly and effectively as it once did.

"I enjoyed the hour," he said. "The most important thing for me was to prove my fitness and I thought I did that. I felt very fresh and a lot better than I thought [I would]. Playing under Fabio Capello at Real Madrid, he knows what I'm like as a player so I didn't have to prove anything there but proving my fitness was the biggest thing." He insisted that his partnership with Wes Brown down the right flank as they switched midfield and full-back roles had worked quite well. But it only served to keep Beckham pinned back more than we've ever seen him before, hitting hopeful long balls from deep, instead of doing what he's best at, delivering crosses from the danger areas in the opposition's half.

The only benefit? At least the hapless Brown could occasionally be kept out of harm's way upfield.

The game's most symbolic moment came when Beckham's failure to keep pace with the splendid Franck Ribery, the man who would have been just perfect for Arsenal if Arsene Wenger had ever fancied parting with serious money, ended with him getting booked - for the 16th time for England, incidentally - for tugging the Bayern Munich star's shirt.

The sight of a one-paced battler struggling to derail a direct and speedy creator somehow told the story of an England team still crudely trying, and failing, to catch up with Europe's best. This was a French team without its old and new wonder boys, Thierry Henry and Karim Benzema, yet they still comfortably had the most accomplished players on view in the likes of Ribery, Nicolas Anelka and Florent Malouda, a bloke who can hardly buy a game at Chelsea these days.

Neither of Capello's twin lines of approach last night looked in the same class, because whether you package them in 4-2-3-1 or plain old 4-4-2, what difference does it make when a supposedly world-class player like Ashley Cole can't deliver a single accurate cross or when Michael Owen's most eye-catching contribution in the dying moments is a 25-yard pass in midfield backwards and straight into touch?

How Capello, for all his professed admiration of England's fighting spirit, must have despaired inwardly at seeing such technical shortcomings. Amid this dismal fare, chances are he'll keep turning to someone he can trust.

Goldenboots must still really fancy his chances.