How the England players rated
The enormous banner unfurled by the locals stated “Stereotypes are dead”, the message reinforced by a mocked-up picture of Borat, the comic character who has proved the bête noire of an emerging nation, hanging from the gallows.
If certain stereotypes where shattered in the beautiful country of Kazakhstan, however, others, equally pleasingly, continued to take hold. The notion of a resolute, efficient, free-scoring England team seemed to be outdated even as Fabio Capello embarked on this World Cup qualifying campaign last September, but, nine months on, Italian discipline has turned them into the kind of team that they have traditionally regarded with deep envy.
The performance was nothing to write home about, but with Capello it is all about the result. And the results have been spectacular: six qualifying matches, six wins, with 20 goals scored in the process. Comparisons here are slightly flawed, given the different fixtures faced, but at the same stage of the ill-fated qualifying campaign for last summer’s European Championship finals, England had won three matches and had scored nine goals, all but one of them against Andorra, who, coincidentally, visit Wembley on Wednesday.
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The contrast is impossible to ignore, even if at times on Saturday the performance, like that in the unconvincing 2-1 victory over Ukraine in March, was more evocative of the Steve McClaren era than seems reasonable to point out.
The difference — and it is a critical difference — is that England believe in themselves under Capello, which is why anxiety never threatened to consume them even during a wretched start to the game and why qualification already looks a formality, despite having endured rocky periods during each of their six games, with the exception of the stunning 4-1 win away to Croatia in September, a night when everything suddenly clicked into place.
It is impossible to overstate the significance of that night in Zagreb, given that, to that point, there had been the odd murmur of discontent within the England squad. The performance level has not come close to that standard in the four subsequent qualifying matches, but, in a group such as this, with only ten matches and with little margin for error, results are everything.
It was a point that Graham Taylor made in the check-in queue at Almaty airport yesterday morning, recalling how an excellent performance against Holland in 1993 had yielded only a 2-2 draw, when a 2-1 win would have sent his England team to the World Cup finals at the expense of the much-vaunted Dutch.
Taylor made another point, which is that Capello has scheduled his fixtures superbly. Playing two qualifying matches in early June, when his players’ bodies are closing down a fortnight after the end of a gruelling domestic campaign, was in one sense a risky strategy, but, if games had to be played, far better Kazakhstan, even away from home, and Andorra, than Croatia and Ukraine.
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Taylor may not appreciate the reminder that the May and June fixtures in the 1994 World Cup qualifying campaign were away to Norway (a 2-0 defeat) and Poland (a 1-1 draw), even if FA officials still suspect that they fell victim to a stitch-up by the other nations then.
Stereotypes are all about labels and, while the Taylor era, along with that of McClaren, is characterised as the darkest in the modern history of the England team, it is hard to avoid being sucked into the belief that Capello, with an authoritarian regime built on foundations of discipline on and off the pitch, is on to something good. Whereas Portugal, France, Mexico and others face difficulties in their bid to reach next summer’s tournament in South Africa, England are sailing through the qualifying campaign, one of only three European teams with a 100 per cent record, along with Holland and Spain.
Ah, Spain. There is a very public acknowledgement within the England squad that Spain are setting a gold standard, in terms of performance as well as results.
On Saturday evening, the notion of England playing like the Spain of Xavi, Iniesta, Silva and Torres appeared as fanciful as ever, particularly during the opening 25 minutes. Capello looked distinctly unimpressed and, with Glen Johnson caught cold on a couple of occasions and Gareth Barry twice hitting long diagonal passes into touch, it was easy to see why.
But, to use another stereotype, these plucky little nations — Kazakhstan is the ninth-biggest country in the world — always have a go in the early stages. Once John Terry had dug Johnson out of trouble and once the bustling Sergey Ostapenko had succumbed to a knee injury, having had a goal correctly disallowed for a marginal offside, Kazakhstan ran out of steam and England, almost in spite of themselves, took the lead, Barry heading in unmarked from Steven Gerrard’s cross.
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With that, everything changed. Emile Heskey made it 2-0 in first-half stoppage time, his first competitive goal for his country since the 2002 World Cup, and Kazakhstan had been sapped of belief. Wayne Rooney acrobatically hooked home the third goal with 18 minutes remaining and then Frank Lampard, with an emphatic penalty, made it 4-0.
It had not been very Spain-like, but, with the exception of Croatia in September and, to a lesser extent, the 3-1 win in Belarus a month later, the football under Capello has yet to attain any great fluency. It is, of course, about results — and the sooner that succession of results brings qualification, the sooner Capello can experiment with South Africa in mind.
But he will still be desperate to keep winning. These Italians are strange like that. And if that sounds like a stereotype, it is a healthy one as far as England are concerned.