There's no mystery, no twists, no cliffhangers. It might even be pushing it to say that there's all that much respect involved on either side. There's simply a man, a Swedish man in thinrimmed glasses harbouring an infatuation. There's something there between him and them, something that's kept them all going this long. You could say it's a love too strong to die. Or you could say he's just too weak to kill it.

David Beckham won the Man of the Match award against Trinidad and Tobago on Thursday. It's a nothing award, sponsored by Budweiser, a company who use as a selling point the fact that they have no interest in the game. You do the football, we'll do the beer, they say.

Well, somebody clearly took them up on both sides of their offer. Beckham wasn't the worst player on the pitch but by no stretch could he have been remotely thought the best.

And yet round and round it goes, the circle of celebrity and kid gloves with which he and the other untouchables in Eriksson's team are treated.

In Nuremburg after the game, it was put to Beckham that maybe Aaron Lennon was pushing him for his place now. You should have seen the incredulous look on his face. "Sorry?" he said, as if someone had just asked him to name the Trinidadian unit of currency. Then he caught himself up and delivered a couple of sentences about the positives of having players who can come in and do a job and so forth.

But that brief look was just about the only moment of real truth he or any other England player allowed to shine through after their second woeful performance in two games. It said exactly what everyone knows, what everyone has always known . . .that there's as much chance of Prince Harry dusting off the old Nazi get-up and watching the Sweden game from the stands in Cologne on Tuesday night as there is of Eriksson letting his devotion subside.

Even the newly-emboldened Eriksson . . . sod 'em all Sven with one foot out on the street . . . can't bring himself any further than to hook Michael Owen twice in two games before the hour mark (and, hilariously, the second time was because Eriksson . . .not a word of a lie, now . . .wanted to keep Peter Crouch on so as to counter the threat of the Trinidad and Wrexham centre-half Denis Lawrence at corners and free kicks). Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard are as safe as if their names were contained in a PS tacked on to the end of the 10 Commandments.

Rio Ferdinand couldn't play his way out of the team if he gave away a penalty a game.

When Eriksson said on Thursday that he was stubborn, he meant it as a boast, a defiant statement of his strength. But that only works if you are right. And if his version of right can't break down Trinidad and Tobago until seven minutes from the end of a World Cup match, then he's even more deluded and in thrall to his poster boys than previously imagined.

It isn't just him, mind. The English press are just as culpable in places. One of them told afterwards of how, in doing the ratings for the next day's paper, he'd awarded mostly threes and fours but as soon as Gerrard's goal went in, he tacked another two on to everyone. Another actually asked Peter Crouch afterwards if he thought Beckham was on a par with the Brazilians. Straight up.

And Crouch never so much as blinked.

"Oh, yeah, " he said. "You see him in training with his free-kicks and passing . . . he's the best in the world at dead balls and crossing ability. It's a pleasure to play with him.

As soon as David gets the ball, you know he's going to sling one in and it's just a case of meeting it. It was a fantastic ball for the goal and I'm sure he'll do that throughout the tournament."

The delusion is wholescale.

Argentina score six goals including the best seen at a World Cup for 20 years?

We're England, we believe we can win it. Spain score four, Italy and Holland beat the best Africa has to offer in pulsating matches? We're England, we've got the best players from the best league in the world. We believe we can win it.

After two games, there isn't a screed of evidence to suggest they have it in them.

Nothing but the vague hope that John Terry will keep clearing off his line at one end and Wayne Rooney will do his thing at the other. That, and the rather sweet hope that Beckham keeps slinging the crosses in. The fact that of the goals scored by the teams that have impressed so far, only Jan Koller's opener for the Czechs against America has come from a slung-in cross means nothing to them.

There's nothing about England to make you think they could beat any decent side that lines up as obdurately against them as both Paraguay and Trinidad and Tobago did. No way of looking at it that convinces you that their midfield as currently constituted is ever going to get it done for them.

And yet, nor is there the slightest indication that they're going to change. That Trinidad were only broken down after the introduction of two wingers who would run at the full-backs doesn't mean for a second that either Lennon or Stewart Downing will start against Sweden on Tuesday. No formation changes will come, none in personnel either unless Eriksson decides Gerrard's yellow card is enough for him to be kept back. Even if that happens, Michael Carrick or Owen Hargreaves will make way again for the secondround match so that Gerrard and Lampard can combine (or not) in the centre of the English midfield.

By now, there shouldn't be any mystery as to why the two of them don't click together. It's because despite their undeniable talents being primarily in attack, neither of them are particularly imaginative or inventive. At both Liverpool and Chelsea, they have others to do the initial winkling out for them. Gerrard feeds off Xabi Alonso and Crouch, Lampard off Joe Cole and Arjen Robben and Didier Drogba. They're there at the business end, either finishing off themselves or playing the kill-shot pass.

Here, they're mostly getting in each other's way.

It's fully and squarely Eriksson's fault. This is not a new problem. England went out of Euro 2004 with three of the same midfield and a fourth, Paul Scholes, who so abhorred being made to play on the left that in some games, he just flat refused to stay out there and do so.

Eriksson knew then that sorting out his midfield would be essential for Germany and he still failed to do so. Any time he was asked about it, he smiled and shrugged and said that they were great players and they would be great at the World Cup. He treated friendlies with disdain and never tried anything different out until it was too late and then got his comeuppance when an attempt to experiment crashed and burned against Northern Ireland.

Even when he did have a look at a few lateral-thinking options, each was designed as a way to keep both Lampard and Gerrard on the pitch together in the desperate hope that they'd muddle through somehow. Never has it been suggested or apparently even contemplated that one of them should be benched. Eriksson had two years and a yawningly easy qualifying group to sit the pair of them down and tell them learn to play as a pair . . .

or better yet, coach them as to how to do it himself . . . with the promise that if it didn't work out, one of them would have to be moved aside. It's hard to believe it ever even crossed his mind.

Funny thing. Part of the stated reason for going for a non-English coach in the first place was to bring a different thought process and a freshness of ideas to their set-up.

And yet, here they are, playing exactly how you'd expect them to, crossing high balls in on top of a beanpole centreforward . . . who, by the by, can't head the ball . . . and sticking rigidly to 4-4-2 as if to do otherwise meant having to give up the pound as well. On top of that, the manager is suspicious of anyone from a club outside the Champions League.

It's this dogged inflexibility that will be the legacy of the Eriksson era when it ends against either Germany or Ecuador next weekend. His obsession with headline-grabbing names is what he'll be remembered for, be those names Beckham, Gerrard or Lampard (not to mention Ulrika). Putting your best players on the pitch isn't the same thing as putting your best team out there.

Ask Jose Pekerman, who refuses to start Carlos Tevez, Lionel Messi or Pablo Aimar because Juan Roman Riquelme needs the space they play in for himself. Or Luis Aragones, whose bench against Ukraine on Wednesday included the guile, pace and skill of Jose Antonio Reyes, Joaquin and Andres Iniesta while Marcos Senna and Luis Garcia worked like dogs to let Xabi, David Villa and Fernando Torres tear Ukraine to pieces. Put it this way . . . if Eriksson was in charge of Holland, Edgar Davids and Clarence Seedorf would be playing behind Patrick Kluivert and Ruud Van Nistelrooy. And the Ivory Coast would have beaten them on Friday night.

England have wasted as good a chance as they've had since 1990 of doing well at a World Cup and all because their European manager just hadn't it in him to move away from an English mindset.

Of course, they don't seem to know just yet that they've wasted it.

Best league in the world, don't you know.