Graphic: Formations, bets and every last statistic

Croatia nil. It’s as simple as that. If Croatia get nil, then England qualify for the European Championship finals. It’s the one certainty of what promises to be a long, dark night of doubt. One does not need to be Nostradamus to predict that the weight of the occasion will fall on England’s defence.

Goals are great, but they don’t really compare in terms of satisfaction, craftsmanship, inspiration and blind luck to a beautiful and blessed nil. What a pity, then, that England are likely to go into this match without a single one of their five first-choice defenders. With Gary Neville, Rio Ferdinand and John Terry absent and Ashley Cole likely to remain unfit, or at least unrisked, the back four is not exactly the perfectly honed machine that coaches aim for. You need defenders who know each other’s habits, who are aware of each other’s understanding of space.

The fifth absentee is likely to be Paul Robinson. As Steve McClaren, the England head coach, pondered whether to stick with the traumatised Robinson or twist with the untried Scott Carson, it was obvious who McClaren really wanted in goal. It was the preZagreb Robinson.

But Robinson is a player shot to hell. That air-shot against Croatia, in which he aimed a kick at a back-pass from Neville, missed and watched it trundle into the goal, has destroyed him. It wasn’t even his fault; the ball hit a divot and hopped over his foot. It happens all the time in cricket and costs four runs. It happens all the time to outfielders and they lose possession. When it happens to a goalkeeper it costs a goal, a match, a reputation, a career.

The goalkeeper has a chance to make or to remake a reputation. The entire improvised, lashed-up Heath Robinson device of the England defence has a unique chance to shine, for this is one of those exceptional footballing nights in which the defenders know that they are going to be the stars.

Well, good defenders know that they are always the stars, it’s just that those watching don’t often appreciate this truth. Who was the hero of England’s greatest win in recent years, the 5-1 victory over Germany in Munich? Answer: David Seaman, the goalkeeper, who made an inspired save from Jörg Böhme shortly before half-time, turning the course of the match.

And who is the best player in the Barclays Premier League? Answer: Petr Cech, whose absence through injury for much of last season cost Chelsea the title and José Mourinho his job. Not bad for seven million quid, but nobody takes goalkeeping seriously. Until a night such as tonight, that is, when normal priorities are reversed, the goalkeeper is the main man and the four defenders in front of him are the glamour boys.

Tonight, England’s back four clusters around the great and ancient totem of Sol Campbell, a paid-up member of the Sensitive Footballers’ Union. At his best – that is to say, some years back – he was a dashing and formidable figure who seemed to make it morally as well as physically impossible to score a goal against him.

That self-belief made him a one-man park-the-bus option. He inspired play on every corner of the pitch because of the colossal self-certainty of his defence. That was Campbell. Alas, that was Campbell seven or eight years ago.

To make things tougher, he has to try, again, to establish a relationship with the three-cap Joleon Lescott. This is not a night when you can get away with being a promising young man; Lescott must find inspiration on a rare night when every person understands the extent to which defence matters.

Micah Richards has confidence to spare, but he lacks the maturity of performance to go with it. And Wayne Bridge will always be first class of the second class. Still, there can be inspiration and a little glory in that, as Danny Mills discovered when called up as an emergency defender for the 2002 World Cup.

So tonight represents opportunity. This is a terrible pity. It would be an awful lot better if it represented certainty; a time for the tried and tested to move into their accustomed positions with an easy self-confidence; Clean Sheets R Us and the Croatia strikers feeling as if they were facing a brick wall. But as it is, we are likely to have two new bugs, a has-been and a never-wozzer lining up in front of a wet-behind-the ears goalkeeper. Can one of these find inspiration? Can one of these rise to the occasion and unite the five defenders so that they act as one man and create about them an invisible but utterly impenetrable force field? I fear it will be a long night, but if you can’t take long nights of hard, bitter, churning, ridiculous, laughable, hysterical anxiety in the face of an absurd mixture of ill-luck and impossible good fortune then you have no business being an England supporter.