THRILLED as I was to watch England squeak home against a team of amiable goatherds in midweek - the Swiss second XI, more or less – it is not so much the quality of the football that has entertained me during Fabio Capello’s brief tenure. It is the other stuff.

You would think that there is scarcely a more difficult job in the world than turning this distracted and effete England team into world-beaters – but Signore Capello has found it: turning the England players into sentient and respectful individuals. His rules for the training sessions last week were magnificently funny. Not only did the players have to turn up to the table to eat at the same time as everybody else, they were also forbidden to leave the table until everyone else had finished. No, Ferdinand, you can’t get down to play Rainbow Six Vegas on your Xbox until Ger-rard has finished his pudding, just sit there and be patient. And stop dribbling into your napkin, it’s not clever or funny.

These are the sort of rules parents impose upon children at preschool age, somewhere between that mind-numbing Thomas the Tank Engine stage and the terrible appearance of the first Roboreptile. The players were also addressed crisply by their surnames (no more of that bloody “Stevie G” and “Lamps”) and forbidden to play with their mobile phones. In short, they were treated in the manner you might have encountered in an early Edwardian reformatory – and, better still, Capello let the press and the public know that this was how he intended to treat them and that he didn’t really care if they liked it or not.

As a piece of public relations, this was stupendously good stuff; maybe I am wrong, but I suspect that there is not an enormous reservoir of goodwill out there towards England’s international footballers. I have the suspicion that an awful lot of people consider them to be dissolute, pampered cretins possessed of a ludicrously high opinion of themselves, divested entirely of humility, a sense of responsibility, good taste, even a primitive command of the English language, a moral compass and indeed footballing ability.

And so Fabio’s strictures will have found happy accord from Workington to Weymouth.

Even if England never win another game of football, it will at least give the viewing public a certain cruel pleasure to know that they are not being indulged behind the scenes. Capello is probably the first national manager since Ron Greenwood (and with the possible exception, oddly enough, of Glenn Hod-dle) not to consider himself either one of the lads or a kind and doddery uncle who does not quite understand the full meaning of in loco parentis. His attitude towards the players seemed to be one of patience bordering on mild distaste, which is exactly as it should be.

But it is not just good public relations; call me the eternal optimist, but it may just have one or two beneficial consequences on the field of play. Let us make a fairly large assumption – that the present crop of England players are at least one-fiftieth as good as they think they are, that there really is a degree of talent in the ranks, but a talent that rarely shows itself on the international stage. My suspicion has always been that England’s problems are psychological; that they believe that they are good enough to beat the likes of Trinidad and Tobago – and indeed Croatia – simply by turning up; that passion and commitment are not really required at all because they are proven geniuses of the game and running around, sweating, doing the ugly stuff, is really quite beneath them.

It was certainly the case during the European Championship qualifying games that the players who shone were those who had not attained the exalted status of being an automatic choice for England, so that they still had something to prove – your Emile Heskeys, Gareth Barrys and so on. The tendency of the England regulars – perfectly epitomised by Paul Robinson and, during the last World Cup, Frank Lamp-ard, was to serially underperform and then, during the postmatch press conference, to blame outrageous misfortune for an adverse result. I reckon they won’t be able to get away with that for much longer.

By chipping away at their exalted status and treating the players in the manner we would treat them, given the chance, Capello has identified the root cause of England’s chronic and dispiriting history of failure. And dropping David Beckham and making Michael Owen sulk on the bench for 90 minutes reinforced the philosophy. Reasons to be very cheerful then. Hell, carry on like this and we might even nick a point off Andorra.