Two Games in and Capello's England Already Look Stale

The really worrying thing was that, under a manager supervising only his second game, England's defining characteristic on Wednesday night was staleness. Fabio Capello had selected a starting line-up featuring eight of the players who ran out to face Portugal in the World Cup quarter-final in Gelsenkirchen on July 1 2006, so he really should not have been surprised when so many of the weaknesses of that campaign were duly reproduced. England lacked sharpness, originality and a sense of collective movement: nothing new there.

When Capello claimed that the team had played with "personality", he was just finding something for his interpreter to say. As he and his assistants made their way back from Paris, they would have been pondering the dreadful possibility that the players with big reputations inherited from the era of Sven-Goran Eriksson and Steve McClaren will never, at international level, live up to the promises made on their behalf.

It is good to see the players being made to wear proper suits and ties while on England duty, to wait for the last person to finish a meal before leaving the table, and - who knows? - to open doors for ladies and to help old people across the street. Anything that encourages them to grow up must be welcomed. Helping them to play better football, however, is a much bigger step.

Among managers of high achievement in the modern era, Capello is a pronounced conservative. Even though he told his squad, before sending them out to face the vice-champions of the world, that he wanted them to be unafraid to take risks, by and large his personal trophy cabinet has not been filled through an attachment to romantic adventure. It is hard to see him casting aside an entire generation of Englishmen before most of them have reached their 30th birthdays, but that is what he might have to do.

Looking through the reports of Wednesday's other matches, he will have noted that Brazil beat Sweden with a brilliant goal from the 18-year-old Alexandre Pato and that Sergio Agüero, aged 19, gave Argentina the lead in their 2-0 victory over Egypt. Can England produce a teenage striker of their quality? The answer to that will not be known until Theo Walcott is given a start in his proper position.

One thing Capello got right was the formation. Until he made changes to the personnel and the shape at half-time, reverting to a penny-plain 4-4-2, England's failings had been individual rather than structural. And the man who made the initial 4-2-3-1 work, emerging from the match as the one player in a red shirt to have distinguished himself over the full 90 minutes, was Owen Hargreaves.

Against Switzerland last month, in Capello's debut fixture, Hargreaves was given only a quarter of an hour as Gareth Barry's replacement. On Wednesday night he and Barry played the entire game together, and after a slightly sticky start from the Aston Villa captain they formed the one element of the team that functioned satisfactorily.

If the eye was more frequently drawn to the pair fulfilling the same joint role at the base of the opposition's midfield, that was because the veteran Claude Makelele and the young Jérémy Toulalan were operating in a more helpful team environment - and also because, well, Makelele is Makelele, his perception and alacrity undimmed by his 35 years. But Hargreaves, in particular, rose above a threadbare setting with a performance of verve and initiative, just as he did in Germany in 2006, when he was England's outstanding player by the length of Baden-Baden's tree-lined central avenue.

Hargreaves does not have Makelele's ability to become the still center of the whirling storm. He is a more physically active player, and if he has a weakness it is his willingness to bustle around, sometimes chasing a lost cause. But he shares Makelele's ironclad self-abnegation, reveling in doing the unglamorous stuff, making the tackles and the interceptions before playing the short, unshowy passes that allow others to display more extravagant skills, and his dead-ball technique should be exploited when David Beckham is no longer part of the equation.

He is also caught in possession occasionally, as he was towards the end of the first half when Nicolas Anelka nipped in and stole the ball as he was trying to turn while facing his own goal. But even Makelele misplaced a pass or two, and he was not having to cope with the threat of a Franck Ribéry coming off the right wing to create havoc in the central areas.

Given Ribéry's excellence, and the threat of Anelka, England may count themselves fortunate to have conceded only one goal. Hargreaves can take much of the credit, and it may be that Capello will allow his partnership with the more ponderous Barry the opportunity to grow into something of substance.

Curiously, Sir Alex Ferguson seems unconvinced about the Calgary-born player's qualities. Having spent a long time persuading Bayern Munich to release him for £17m, the Manchester United manager now appears reluctant to make him a key component of his first-choice team. Hargreaves was hampered by tendinitis earlier this season, but for the important match against Liverpool last Sunday Ferguson preferred to combine the dynamism of Anderson with the composure and greater passing range of Michael Carrick, who was left out of the Paris party.

For England, however, the real problems lie further forward. At 27, and with 41 caps to his name (albeit most of them as a substitute), Hargreaves is one of the few available elements on which Capello can rely. His intelligence, articulacy, industriousness, team sense and all-round maturity suggest that the manager might do well to include him in his roster of potential captains. Having passed his audition many times over, he could be the Carlos Dunga or the Didier Deschamps that this team so badly needs.