None of that was the most interesting of the week's developments, though. That accolade belonged to the fact that despite the abysmal performances in attack against both Paraguay and Trinidad and Tobago, despite the horrid lack of imagination and dearth of invention, the first thing Sven Goran Eriksson has been prepared to break ranks and criticise his players over was the defending against set-pieces on Tuesday night. It seems you can fluff a 10-yard pass all you like, lash 50-yard high balls cross-field at your will but lose your man at a corner there'll be hell to pay.

Some of the players were taken aback by Eriksson's newfound grouchiness . . .anger is still probably too strong a term . . . when he addressed the problem in their next training session on Thursday. "It surprised me, " said John Terry. "Something's changed with Sven.

He's been a lot more aggressive than before. He's been raising his voice. He will never knock over tables or scream in your face but he has certainly been saying a lot more. He has been more demanding than I've ever known him before.

"I'm not talking about shouting or screaming . . . he's just been a lot more aggressive. That's the one thing that really stands out. He knows we have a very good side and he knows this is his last chance to win something with a very good group of players. The defenders were disappointed with the way we had played and Sven has singled that out."

Indeed he has. He even took to describing the defending against Sweden as "awful". For a man whose most outlandish pronouncement during his term as manager probably extended no further than saying David Seaman's flap at Ronaldinho's free in Japan "was not so good", it was, to put it mildly, something of a departure.

Terry admitted on Friday that it was a timely one. A repeat of Tuesday's haplessness against Ecuador today will bring its inevitable forfeit.

"Before the game, our instructions are on the board and we know who we are marking and the responsibilities we have at set-pieces.

But Sweden overpowered us.

Once they won the first couple of headers we looked shaky. Everyone has to stand up to their responsibilities.

We have worked hard on that. If you slip up in the group stages then you can bounce back. Now we have 90 minutes to get it right or we are out of the competition."

Doubtless, Eriksson's changed front isn't unrelated to the fact that he can see the bottom of the hourglass getting fuller with every glance. But maybe it's a bit more than that too. Maybe it's an English thing, this idea that whatever about not being able to play a couple of one-twos against players from the second division, you daren't make a hash of setpieces. As soon as a couple of goals went in, there was a sense of collective responsibility. Terry put his hand up, Jamie Carragher too.

But any time an England player or the manager was asked over the past fortnight about the lack of goals or cleverness or anything approaching it, the responses were along different lines.

We've defended well, kept clean sheets, won our games. Everything's rosy, we believe it's going to happen for us. Eriksson even went as far as to say that it's unlikely an England team would ever score a goal like Esteban Cambiasso's because "very few European teams play in that way". Which is like saying an author won't ever get a book published because he don't write good.

England have only had one regular in the tournament who's been more poetry than prose. Joe Cole should have been given the Man of the Match award against Paraguay and couldn't but have won it against Sweden.

In a side and a squad that seems unable to think itself out of trouble so rigid in its ways has it become, he's stood alone on a rock as the rest have been washed away.

When you listen to him talk, you can't help the feeling that he wouldn't mind being in one of the European teams who "play in that way". Put it to him that he looks comfortable as a right-footed solution to England's perennial left-wing problem and the maturity and knowledge in his answer makes you wonder . . . not for the first time . . . why it took Eriksson such an age to use him there.

"Football's moved on from the days of having two wingers crossing the ball for two big centre forwards, " he says. "International football's about keeping the ball and intricate passes and making angles. Some games out wide you get lots of the ball and can run at the full-back.

Other games you don't see much of the ball and have to dig in, but as long as I'm disciplined and keep the structure right and don't go off at a tangent, the gaffer's happy with me.

"Sometimes I have to force myself to give us width on the left. I'm a winger now.

With my attributes, I can play central but to get the ball down and get running at players, that's what I'm good at. The only place to do that in modern-day football is out wide. It's too congested in the middle."

Makes a welcome change from his captain who had the chutzpah to maintain after his woeful performance against Sweden that the problem was the ball never came his way. "The best way to get the best out of me is to give me the ball, " he said on Friday. "If I've got the ball and a yard of space, 99 per cent of the time I will deliver it for somebody to score." In other words, it's not my fault nobody gives me the ball and it's not my fault that when I cross it in, people miss. Little wonder that there's speculation doing the rounds that Beckham will retire after the tournament rather than have McClaren take the captaincy off him.

Of course, "after the tournament" could be around eight o'clock this evening. It wouldn't be an England World Cup game if it didn't feature another Eriksson gamble plucked seemingly from the clear blue sky. This one features his fourth formation in as many games and sees the introduction of Michael Carrick to anchor a 4-1-4-1, with Owen Hargreaves moving to right-back.

The fact that Carrick has never played a minute of competitive football for England doesn't seem to perturb the manager who, as ever, is counting on the triumph of blind luck over preparation and organisation.

The injection of a little realism can only go so far, obviously.

ENGLAND SEARCH THEIR MEMORIES TO FIND A WINNING FORMULA SECOND ROUND ENGLAND v ECUADOR 4.00, Stuttgart Live, RTE 2 , BBC 1, 3.30

"England are a class above Poland, " said Ecuador manager Luis Fernando Suarez during the week, "but we are on a high and have the skill, spirit and organisation to go further. It might sound foolish but why shouldn't we feel confident of being quarter-finalists?"

Why indeed, Luis. Why indeed.

Take the way the world looks to the respective teams this morning. One has played some thunderously entertaining football in two of its three games so far; the other has managed at best a half of something approaching coherence. One is bouncing along with the joy of a tournament performance beyond expectations; the other is divided, derided and carrying itself as if the whole experience has become one big chore. One is, like the man said, on a high with skill, spirit and organisation to the fore; the other could claim to have all that but would . . . or at least should . . . struggle to look you in the eye while doing so.

So maybe it's best to turn the question around and ask it in camera negative form. Why, in fact, should England feel confident of making the quarterfinal? They have the better players, of course, so there's a potential reason in that. But if these better players can't play together . . . and the evidence so far hasn't exactly brought gasps from the gallery . . . then mere potential it remains. They had better players than Paraguay as well, remember, and needed an own goal to beat them. Paraguay and Ecuador were separated only by goals conceded in the South American qualifiers, Ecuador coughing up four fewer.

And now, on top of everything else, England are having trouble defending set-pieces, the one area you could have been reasonably confident they had nailed down. There did at least appear to be a sense of realism creeping in with some of the players during the week with John Terry hanging his head in shame at having lost a goal to a throw-in that bounced twice in the box, something that probably last happened to him as an eightyear-old.

They were all at sea from corners after half-time against Sweden as well, though. You'd dismiss it as a bad half at the office if it wasn't for the fact that England's biggest defensive weakness at Euro 2004 was dealing with corners and freekicks. Maybe it just took them meeting a half-decent side for it to be exposed again out here.

What today comes down to is whether or not the Ecuadorians can see through all the hype and celebrity and realise properly that England are there for the taking. Suarez certainly seems to have it in him to point out the naked emperor to his players.

The fact that he dropped five booked or injured first-teamers for the Germany game would appear to show he hadn't the least bit of fear in him over facing Sven Goran Eriksson and his side. As statements of intent go, it was emphatic. The 3-0 hiding probably wasn't what he had in mind but no matter.

Suarez has shown himself to be an astute tactician in the tournament so far, constantly getting Edison Mendez and Luis Valencia to swap wings with each other with Carlos Tenorio and Augustin Delgado pushed right up against the centre-halves at the top of a 4-4-2. They'll compete and they'll work and they won't give England a second's peace.

England were better in that first half against Sweden, though, and despite trying out their fourth formation in four games, they should have enough about them to muddle through here, if only from memory.