Table Mountain, the massive sentinel of sandstone rock that presides over Cape Town, has a microclimate. A thick band of vapour that locals call the "table cloth" can descend suddenly upon its top. Clouds can just as quickly come down over any leading nation's World Cup campaign, such is the tournament's capacity for surprises, but their draw gives England, now ranked ninth in the world, about the most favourable possible forecast by which to plot success at South Africa 2010. Yes, USA are the best team they could have been drawn against from Pot Two. Yes, any side from Group D will provide a testing second round and yes, France might have to be negotiated in the last eight.
But imagine what could have been. Spain are favourites, while the most likely teams to eliminate England from not just this but any World Cup are Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Argentina. If the Germans and Argentinians win their groups, England would not have to meet any of these opponents until a probable showdown with Brazil at the semi-final stage.
Fabio Capello must feel he has pulled off that trick of whipping a table cloth from a table while leaving the cups and saucers still standing. A World Cup draw is a game of risk. England have engaged in it and their aspirations remain untoppled.
If there is any cumulo-nimbus above Capello it hangs over an area that obsesses the manager: conditioning and preparation. If the draw was kind to England in terms of the opposition they might face it was cruel as regards scheduling. One of Capello's main hopes had been to avoid an early opening game yet England are booked to meet their toughest Group C foes on the tournament's second day.
Capello's worry, held since the fixture list for the 2009-10 club season was revealed, is that at least one English club will reach the Champions League final, to be played in Madrid on May 22, and that an early World Cup start does not leave much time to prepare players ready for the fray. They need to be rested, then given a blast of fresh conditioning work, taken to a training camp, flown to South Africa, acclimatised and drilled tactically.
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Vincente del Bosque, who must similarly imagine Spanish club presence at the Bernabeu on May 22, has four more days than Capello to prepare his Spain squad thanks to the draw. Four days is a long time in an athlete's recovery process, tactical preparation and honing of fitness. It is why Capello was smiling but not beaming in Cape Town on Friday evening.
"There is one problem," the manager said. "If English teams play in the final of the Champions League. There are two things: if they win, then the players will be happy and it will be psychologically important for them. However, if they lost, it will not be easy for them to recover their forces physically and psychologically."
Should Arsenal reach the Bernabeu, only Theo Walcott, among Capello's likely players, would be selected. A reprise of the 2008 Champions League final between Manchester United and Chelsea would leave Capello fretting over the state of almost an entire XI of his picks.
"I hope the English teams come [to the Champions League final] and the players will be happy and recover the mind, the mentality, the spirit. If they lose I hope they will not be too sorry because the time is a little bit close.
"It's not an excuse because when you come at the World Cup you have to play every game to win and you have to respect the other teams. "You cannot think about the last [club] result because the World Cup is completely different, the pressure and how you think is different. In the first round, the first game is always the most important.
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"But I know there could be eight or nine players in the [Champions League] final. It's a problem. Because if there are nine or so England players involved then we need a minimum of four or five days to relax them afterwards. But I still hope English teams will play in the final."
Capello wants to fit in a training camp in Irdning, Austria, and a friendly, probably against Japan in Salzburg on May 29, between the season's end and England's departure for South Africa. He had precise ideas about his ideal schedule, something that has now been denied him. When it comes to preparation he is meticulous and his obsession with detail is such that when he inspected the design for England's mooted World Cup training base, the Royal Bafokeng Sports Complex in Rustenburg, a £20m campus its owners are building with input from the Football Association, he ordered the planned location for the facility's tennis courts be moved. The courts would have interfered with his view of the practice pitches from the hotel and Capello said he wanted an uninterrupted walk between the hotel and training. He selected where two grass pitches will be and, unimpressed by the quality of the turf when he visited the complex last week, demanded their surfaces be given serious remedial work.
The Bafokeng campus, at 1,200m above sea level, is the World Cup's highest training base and altitude is a key factor in Capello's planning, hence the pre-tournament trip to the Alps. The majority of finals games will be played on the high veld and, physiologically, England will benefit from having trained at altitude when they come down to the coastal cities of Cape Town and Port Elizabeth for group games. Rustenburg is the venue of England's opening game and the second-round match for the winners of Group C and Royal Bafokeng's facility is near Pilanesberg airport, meaning England could fly to Cape Town and Port Elizabeth without long road journeys.
At the base, a media centre being built for 500 journalists and security is ultra-tight, with the complex surrounded by an electrified ring of steel, armed guards and a state-of-the-art monitoring system.
Capello had initially fancied a facility at the University of Pretoria, but it has been bagged by Argentina. He has first-hand experience of what can befall a team whose preparation is imperfect. In 1974, he was a star of the Italy squad that arrived for the finals as one of the favourites, without having conceded a goal in almost two years. Haiti ended their clean-sheets sequence in the opening match and defeat against Poland eliminated the Italians. Capello put the calamity down to his side's "poor athletic condition" and failure of their mentality. England do not have to delve far into their World Cup history for cautionary tales. John Doe meted out the biggest lesson regarding what happens when John Bull is complacent when USA beat England 1-0 in 1950. Poor preparation was one of the English failings: Stanley Matthews arrived at the finals late and was rested for the game. The current USA team are ranked much higher than the collection of teachers, mailmen and kitchen hands that comprised the side their country fielded 59 years ago but Capello is sanguine. The Americans were beaten by England at Wembley last year and their manager has detailed knowledge of Bob Bradley's side, having watched them at the Confederations Cup, where they defeated Spain and almost shocked Brazil in the final.
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"I said always that if we want to arrive in the final we have to beat all the teams. These are just the first three games we have to play and it will not be easy because every game you play at the World Cup is different because of the pressure," Capello said. "I respect USA and I saw the game USA played here against Spain. They played very well and know what they have to do because they have the experience of playing in South Africa. But you have to realise that when Spain arrived here they were not in top condition. We respect all the teams but we will play every game without fear."
He has good acquaintance with Slovenia, too, having beaten Matjaz Kek's side in September in a Wembley friendly, which was testing enough to warn England against underestimating their final group opponents. A March friendly against Egypt is being organised to help build up to playing Algeria. "I have to study Algeria because I don't know them. I saw their goals from qualification. I haven't seen an entire game. We will play Egypt because they were the last team to face Algeria," Capello said. The Italian, predictably, wants to put the brakes on those whose minds are already racing in the direction of a semi-final versus the Brazilians. "I don't want to talk about Brazil now, not about the other [teams outside England's group]," Capello said.
Twenty years will have passed since England reached the last four of a World Cup, a miserable record given that the list of countries who have been in the semi-finals since 1990 includes Turkey, South Korea, Croatia, Sweden and Bulgaria. The quarter-finals stage has proved England's glass ceiling in recent tournaments but the draw has handed Capello a sledgehammer and invited him to smash through it. "He has instilled that winning mentality and steel which has been missing over the years," said David Beckham. "Without doubt, he can make that tiny difference. He has made us not scared of teams." Fears - and clouds - enveloped many countries after the balls were plucked from the pots in Cape Town. But not England.