Beckham Flies in Face of Rumours

One by one the scuffed and scattered pieces of the jigsaw may be falling back into place. After England had scraped a 2-2 draw in their final warm-up fixture against Cameroon in Kobe yesterday, Tord Grip revealed that, in his estimation, David Beckham's chances of being fit to face Sweden next Sunday are now 50-50, considerably better odds than were being offered in yesterday's papers.

The sight of Beckham jogging and performing light ball exercises had clearly encouraged Sven-Goran Eriksson's assistant as much as it had diverted the Japanese crowd, many of whom were wearing England shirts bearing his name. Kieron Dyer, the other major worry, was also to be seen practising with a ball before and after the match, sprinting and dribbling in tandem with Ashley Cole, the victim of a less serious injury, under the supervision of Ivan Carminati, the squad's fitness coach.

If there was an element of public relations about these exercises, Eriksson himself presented an optimistic front in marked contrast with his weary demeanour on Friday, when he had just sent Danny Murphy home with a broken foot and invited Trevor Sinclair to return in his place. Sinclair's assured performance yesterday, after coming on as a half-time substitute, also removed the potential for further criticism of the coach's ability to manage the injury crisis.

"I was surprised," Eriksson said of the stories in some Sunday papers that Beckham's failure to recover would shortly see him on a plane home. "I am of the opinion that everything is going very nice, very good. That he should leave and go home, I could not even dream about that. We haven't talked about it. He was running and I spoke to him afterwards and he had no pain, no complaints. As long as he knows that the bone has healed, he will be okay. The last x-ray was very positive."

Dyer's ability to take part in the World Cup, he added, would be the subject of a decision later in the week - the deadline for a replacement being 6.30pm Japanese time on Saturday, 24 hours before England take the field against Sweden in Saitamo. "I need to have a guarantee that he will be fit for Argentina," Eriksson said. "If you have one player who is not fit for Sweden, you can live with it; but not two."

Dyer, asked if he expected to play in this World Cup, sounded positive. "Yes," he said. "It's going much better than I expected. I'm training well, training without pain for the first time and I expect to be back in full training this week. I could even be fit for Sweden."

There was better news, too, about Nicky Butt, who did not take part in yesterday's match but went through a full training session on Saturday without problems. "He did everything with us," Eriksson reported. "If it had been a very important match today, he might even have played a few minutes."

In the second half against Cameroon England put out a midfield consisting of four men with barely a handful of starts between them. Owen Hargreaves completed his second 90-minute appearance for England and Joe Cole his first. Both showed signs of benefiting from the experience of facing the African and Olympic champions but Eriksson did not go overboard.

"It would be a surprise if we started with both of them from the first minute against Sweden," he said, thereby strengthening the impression that he expects Butt and possibly Beckham to take part.

He was explicit in his support for Emile Heskey, who played for the first 45 minutes yesterday on the left of mid field and continued to attract criticism. "I am not concerned about Heskey at all," the coach said. "He will play, whether it is up front or on the left. I believe in him."

It would be premature to describe all this as a transformation but what looked three days ago like a squad waiting for an exit visa seems this morning to be an outfit that believes respectability to be within its grasp. There was much that was prosaic about their play yesterday but they were up against opponents quite capable of becoming the first African team to reach the tournament's last four - albeit a team operating at no more than half-throttle on this occasion, just as England themselves were not risking further damage in physical confrontation.

They continue to find the pitches difficult to play on, thanks to the dryness of the broad-leafed Bermuda grass, which tends to drag at their studs and to slow the progress of the ball along the ground. "I think they watered the pitch before the game," Michael Owen said, "but it makes no difference when the heat's like that. It dries up within seconds. It's difficult to run with the ball without fear of tripping over it and it's hard to play one-touch passing because the second ball always seems to stick and you get a bit of a bobble. It's not ideal but it's the same for everyone."

The capacity crowd of 36,424 applauded the rare moments of spectacular activity but otherwise wrapped their enthusiasm in a polite near silence. "After five minutes," Owen said, "we were all looking around thinking, 'What's happening here?' I don't think we impressed them too much." But they seem to have impressed their fitness experts and that, on the day, was what counted.