Optimism about their footballers’ chances of mounting a serious challenge in the World Cup finals is a quadrennial contagion among the English and the recurring epidemic is seldom checked by the immunising impact that should come from the merest consideration of past experience. The virus is loose in the land earlier than usual, fully 18 months before the next finals are due to begin in South Africa, so it would be natural for those of us who have lived through four decades of disappointment to offer an antidote of scepticism. But in this instance my stocks of the stuff are improbably low. Call it the Fabio effect.

There may be hints of late-onset naivete in allowing less than a year of Fabio Capello’s management to encourage the belief that England, torturously underachieving England, could be ready in 2010 to perform impressively against the heavyweights of the game, perhaps even capable of being threatening contenders for its greatest prize. It does seem a lot of expectation to attach to a nation whose major-tournament record shows just that solitary triumph in the World Cup at Wembley in 1966, with additional semi-final appearances limited to one at global level (1990) and two in the European Championship (1968 and 1996).

The springboard for my tentative leap of faith is certainly not the sequence of results so far achieved by the Italian’s regime, reassuring though recent displays and their statistics clearly are. There is more to lift the spirits than the four straight wins in the World Cup qualifying series that have already all but guaranteed participation in South Africa, more than the evidence of formidable back-up strength in the squad provided in midweek when the absence of seven or eight apparently key men did not prevent England from exploiting the gross shortcomings of Germany in Berlin. There is, above all, unmistakable proof that Capello has so transformed the professional mores of the England camp that the players seem to be breathing a different air.

Gone is the smog of indulgence and cliquish privilege that hung over the group in the days when first Sven-Göran Eriksson and then, briefly, Steve McClaren exercised their limp versions of control. Capello did not take long to deal with any arrogant presumptions of security and under him nobody was liable to harbour delusions of inhabiting some kind of flabby democracy in which the dressing-room furniture might include a soapbox. In his mind, player power is, we may assume, defined strictly as vigour and effectiveness on the field. He has oxygenated the atmosphere around England, freshening it with the taste of genuine competition for places and giving it a sharp edge with his assertion of absolute authority. There is a healthy, productive tension in the ranks.

Its benefits have been easily discerned on the pitch, especially in the qualifying-match demolition of Croatia and Belarus in their own stadiums and that other less meaningful but equally satisfying success on foreign soil on Wednesday night. Common to the performances with which first-choice personnel stylishly earned World Cup points and the confident superiority exhibited by a largely second-string line-up in Berlin was, of course, a sense of organisation and disciplined purpose.

But just as striking in all three games were the sustained energy and concentration of the players, their hungry determination to prove up to what was demanded of them, sometimes with body language that was as explicit as cursing through a loud-hailer, by the leader on the sidelines.

Capello exhorts his men to play without fear of the opposition but he is happy enough if he instils a little anxiety in them, and that is hardly a paradox. Many an outstanding manager (remember Brian Clough, Matt Busby, Jock Stein) has drawn the best out of his players by persuading them that letting him down would be the worst possible option. “I take away their phoney pride and give them real pride,” Cloughie told me. It sounded like an endearingly familiar, self-serving justification of the managerial methods of the egotist’s egotist but those methods most definitely worked.

So too, thus far, have Capello’s with England. Whether we examine his approach to selection and team-building, the coherence of his guidance and decisiveness of his interventions during matches or the commendably uncompromising establishment of one-man rule, all the signs are of rationality, self-belief and adherence to well-tested principles. Nor can anyone doubt his willingness to face controversy if he thinks there is a stance that must be taken. His insistence that FA medical staff should conduct checks on players withdrawn from national service by their clubs on the grounds of injury may turn out to be no more than a symbolic skirmish in a battle he cannot win. But he is right to bring the club-country conflict of interest to the point where the public have a better opportunity to draw their own conclusions and can at least be sure England’s corner is being fought by somebody who isn’t short of nerve or independence.

He is right also when he insists only footballers who are truly fit, regularly exposed to top-grade action and demonstrably in good form will be considered for his team. Having decided such criteria aren’t currently met by David Beckham or Michael Owen, he is not likely to listen to arguments on their behalf, any more than he was influenced by the widespread opinion that Stewart Downing should be jettisoned from his plans after a miserably inadequate showing against those specialists in victimhood Andorra. Understandably keen to find a balanced blend of left- and right-

sided players, Capello fielded Downing on Wednesday and was rewarded with much the best performance the left-footed Middlesbrough forward has given in an England shirt. His was the most admirable of many excellent contributions on a night when, admittedly, reactions to the promise paraded had to be severely tempered by recognition of how abysmal Germany were.

That need for cautious interpretation applies to all of the five consecutive victories that now stand to Capello’s credit. They were at the expense of teams who, on the day, were so blatantly vulnerable that failure to defeat them convincingly would have been worrying. The manager has yet to prove he can make England punch their weight against classier and more dangerous opponents. Hopes that he will do so are legitimately stirred not by the specifics of his embryonic record in the job but by the impression he conveys of having clear policies founded on a deep understanding of football, and the will and drive to implement them.

Still, my admiration for his ways won’t stretch to tempting me to back England for the World Cup at 9-1. The price may be no more off-putting than the meagre 5-1 offered about Brazil or the sixes attached to Argentina, considering that both of those giants have been labouring well adrift of Paraguay in the table for the South American qualifying zone. But history speaks encouragingly to them (in Brazil’s case it is hoarse with cheering), whereas the past is a warning to optimists in England. We are asking a lot of the Fabio effect.

Chambers produces more rage than reason

WHEN a man has been as self-destructive as Dwain Chambers, being self-contradictory is presumably a minor matter. As a brilliant sprinter whose exposure as a drug-taker was followed by luridly detailed confessions of the scale of his offences, he was never going to be a model of sweet reasonableness in his reaction to the horrendous consequences that have descended like a plague on his career, most notoriously the lifetime ban from the Olympics that prevented him from representing Britain at the Beijing Games. But if the anger (as communicated in an interview with Rick Broadbent of The Times ) is understandable, that doesn’t make the inconsistencies in his raging against his fate any easier to accept.

At one point in the interview he said, in apparent reference to the disastrous direction his life took: “I had nobody telling me not to do it.” Did he need somebody to tell him? Is he seriously suggesting that all it would have taken to dissuade him was a little moral guidance from a friendly voice? It’s hard to reconcile such a thought with what he acknowledged earlier about his dealings with Victor Conte, chief sorcerer of the infamous Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (Balco). “I was the one who turned the handle and walked through the door,” said Chambers. “Victor never once forced me down this road, although he was a very good salesman.”

And his explanation of the prevalence of drug abuse among athletes, though it has a ring of accuracy, merely strengthens the impression of calculated criminality for profit: “It’s peer pressure, knowing the guy on your left and the guy on your right are on it, knowing that if you’re not then you’re going to lose your contracts.” All of which makes it difficult for an apprehended offender to justify resenting those who avoid being caught. Not all burglars land in the slammer.

Chambers had quite a lot to say about Usain Bolt, most of it markedly less than enthusiastic. Finding the phenomenal Jamaican — whose record-breaking performances on the sprint track in Beijing entranced the world — so prominent in such a conversation created a shiver of dread. Jamaica’s lack of an anti-doping body provides a context of anxiety. We must pray that the purity of Bolt’s spellbinding feats remains utterly beyond question.

Falling Star so painful

Proof that the enthralling dramas of the National Hunt season are truly with us once again came in its least welcome form at Haydock yesterday. One of the great sport’s ultimate heroes, Kauto Star, winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup of 2007, drew a huge crowd to watch him try to win the Betfair Chase for the third year in a row. But, having started as 5/2 on favourite, he was already under pressure going into the final fence and on the far side of it his forelegs folded under him, precipitating an ignominious slither that dislodged his jockey, Sam Thomas. There were no injuries but just watching was painful.