It is far too early to get jiggy about World Cup

Matthew Norman
2 Apr 2009

The most gratifying feature of a lacklustre Wembley night was the brevity of the national anthem of Ukraine. It lasted barely a minute and not the six and a half predicted by one paper in what proved the least amusing April Fool in a crowded field.

Writing as one whose ancestors left a village near Odessa a century ago when the attentions of the Cossack cavalry began to lose their charm, I hope Ukranian readers take no offence. But another five minutes of that dirgeful din would have made the pogroms seem like comic relief.

The only decent April Fool, in fact, was the outlandish claim that Alan Shearer has consented to manage Newcastle, when he should have been spearheading the England attack.

Mind you, given the freakish plague of injuries to afflict our strikers, it would have been no shock to see Geoff Hurst and Roger Hunt modelling those snazzily retro yet contentious white shirts. Instead it fell to Peter Crouch to lead the line and he did it adequately throughout a first half in which England did just about enough to justify a needlessly nervy win over pedestrian opposition.

However often I see Crouchy, the thought is the same: if only he'd been around a decade earlier, Steve Backley would have propelled him to a new world record.

God have mercy if Fabio Capello is obliged to start with him in a knock-out game in next summer's World Cup but the chance he adroitly took, allied to John Terry's cutely-taken late winner, made qualification a certainty and for that much thanks.

It's certainly true that there's no such thing as an easy game at this level any more (next up at Wembley, by the way, is Andorra), but were Schteve van McClaren recalled from Holland and harnessed in a managerial troika with Graham Taylor and ITV sage David Pleat, it would still take a Premier League cholera pandemic to keep England from South Africa.

How they will fare there remains little clearer after a classically Italian performance in which England, having taken the lead, preferred to husband rather than extend it and came within minutes of paying the penalty.

With Messrs Gerrard and Lampard ineffectual in midfield, and Aaron Lennon a sporadic contributor on the right, the few injections of class came exclusively from Wayne Rooney. After an early overhead kick of glorious audacity and a few exquisite touches, however, the expectant father faded in the second half and was amazingly lucky not to be dismissed for that late demented lunge. If an Andriy Shevchenko equaliser can drive him to a frenzy of frustration, let us pray the baby quickly learns the elusive art of sleeping through the night.

Rooney's stubborn penchant for reckless violence must be Capello's primary fear, because he alone has the touch of genius to transform England from reliable quarter-finalists into potential champions. But there are other concerns besides. Although England looked secure for almost the entire match, as they should against such plodding mediocrities, the only two moments of alarm summed up the persistent defensive frailties.

David James did his heroic best to add to the honour board of calamity, narrowly shouldering away a swerving but harmless effort The Fugitive's one-armer would comfortably have caught. If he's still our best goalkeeper 14 months from now, the usual wild optimism shouldn't be impossible to temper.

As for that Shevchenko goal, this spotlighted the curious difficulty our central defenders suffer in taking their domestic and Champions League mastery on to the international stage. Sides that concede from regulation crosses seldom get jiggy with the World Cup trophy.

It's still early doors, of course, and the eventual return from injury of Joe Cole and Theo Walcott will add guile and explosive pace respectively. England stand on the verge of having an exceedingly tasty squad, and while we said the same before the unmitigated fiasco of 2006, we said it about a squad under Sven's feeble aegis.

Don Fabio belongs, by leagues beyond counting, to a higher plane of tactical cunning and motivational power and no team of his will be remotely easy to beat. But there is a vast chasm between being difficult to conquer and being able to overcome the mightiest opponents.

It's the difference between drawing knock-out games before going out on penalties and rendering that ritual torture unnecessary. On the evidence of last night, and the recent spanking in Seville, a quality gulf remains to be bridged before the favourites quake at us.

Solidity and resilience are fine yeoman traits but they are not sufficient to win a World Cup. Unless and until they are complimented by sustained, high-tempo inter-passing, more inventive movement off the ball and heightened midfield creativity, it would be delusional in the extreme to expect what will be 44 years of pain to end in Johannesburg next summer.