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Ah, England, what an enigmatic football team you are. Just when you have them nailed down as perennial under achievers, comfortable and warm in the knowledge of never having to look beyond quarter finals (or in Steve van McClaren’s case, beyond qualification), they go and ruin it all by being bloody successful.

All the previous couple of day’s plaudits are deserved, and what Fabio Cappello has achieved so far deserves all the sycophantic praise it gets. But the key words are “so far”. Qualifying itself is not as much as an achievement as it is a tick in a box. Sure, the confidence that’s swarming through the squad is a delightful change, and the unshakeable belief that “Fabio knows best” is much preferred to Raymond Domenech’s horoscope based squad selection, but some doubts still linger.

The number one issue is just that, the number one. We’re often reminded by rent-a-quote ITV pundits that the goalkeeper is the least forgiving of positions, and every England fan knows the true meaning of fear when David James decides its a brilliant idea to charge off his line. Capello has indicated that James will be his first choice, and when you sit him alongside Iker Casillas, Gianluigi Buffon, or Edwin Van der Sar, he simply doesn’t compare.

Another problem lays in what happens when the final whistle goes. The English suffer from a very particular problem. The lack of confidence in the national side that’s been bred through years of failure has left a nation unsure of the right thing to say or believe. Couple this with a patriotic blindness of a country which apparently has the god given right to win the World Cup (we invented the game don’t you know?) and a media bandwagon so large it almost reaches South Africa, its no wonder Cappello’s main charge has been trying unburden his player’s minds.

This squad, however, and whisper it quietly, has the potential to do it. Factor in the return of Owen Hargreaves, Theo Walcott, Joe Cole, Michael Carrick, Michael Owen and Rio Ferdinand and you have a very complete squad. There’s competition for places all over the pitch, and along with Capello’s selection policy no one is guaranteed a place in a team which once resembled a members-only gentlemen’s club.

So when the draw is made on December 4th, and England draw Papa New Guinea and the South Sandwich Islands, don’t roll your eyes and say “we’ll slip up there”. Equally don’t reveal your bulldog tattoo and bellow “We’ll teach these boys the true meaning of the game, five past ‘em no problems”. Sit there, and be quietly confident that Cappello has done some of the hard work by rebuilding a talented but broken squad, and it’s only going to get harder. After all, it was you who broke them in the first place.