A work experience lad went along to Sir Alex Ferguson’s press briefing on Friday. “You want to get into this profession?” asked the manager, hamming up his incredulity. “How old are you?” The reply, “15”, came with a confidence of which Ferguson approved. “That’s the kind of boy I’ll give an individual interview to,” he smiled at journalists. “You lot? No chance.”

As a Scotsman, Ferguson could be in good form. His country had lost poorly in Georgia 36 hours previously but qualification for Euro 2008 is still in Scotland’s hands, and overachievement is still the theme of their qualifying campaign. For the English, since Wednesday, there have been no such comforts. And yet neither nationality nor levity stopped Ferguson expressing regret about the position that now befalls Steve McClaren and his team. Asked if he will be glad, from a Manchester United point of view, if England are not in next year’s finals, he said: “No. It’s disappointing if England don’t make it, it really is disappointing. I’ve always thought playing in big tournaments is good for your players.”

Sitting on the sofa while the big events happen elsewhere is a location now familiar to English players. It is where most will be this week. The restart of the Champions League brings no comfort to those worried about England in relation to its national game. No country enters more teams and yet no country with pretensions to being a major football power provides the competition with fewer players. The situation is indicative of how English playing standards have sunk. “There are some pretty distressing figures,” said Ferguson. “How many Brazilians played in the Champions League in the last two rounds of games? How many Englishmen played? How many Scotsmen played? More Scotsmen played in the Champions League than Englishmen, and that’s amazing.”

A look at the last Champions League round - Matchday Two - confirms Ferguson’s point and perhaps shows how shallow is the English well of talent compared to other countries. Not only were there more Scots than English playing in the Champions League in the games on October 2 and 3, but there were also more Portuguese, Serbs, Turks, Czechs and Romanians. France had 34 of its players involved, Italy 30, Spain 29 and Germany 20 and yet England, with just 12 players, fancy themselves as equals, if not first among equals, within Europe’s traditional “big five”. As it was, but for Steve Sidwell coming on for the last six minutes for Chelsea’s match against Valencia, England would have had the same number of representatives as the Ivory Coast.

Was it any wonder McClaren’s men in Moscow lacked knowledge of how to close out a major international match away from home when comparatively few of his squad are being hardened by the tough journeys involved playing for your club in the Champions League? Manchester United have a difficult trip to Kiev on Tuesday and Liverpool an equally arduous one to Istanbul the following night, but with Paul Scholes and Jamie Carragher retired and Gary Neville, Michael Carrick and Owen Hargreaves injured, only six footballers available to McClaren are likely to benefit from the experience: Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard, Wes Brown, Jermaine Pennant, Rio Ferdinand and Peter Crouch. As for Brazilians, just in the four games involving English clubs, there will almost certainly be more of them playing than Englishmen. England thinks itself capable of winning World Cups, therefore it must feel it can beat Brazil. And yet compared to England’s 12 there were 53 Brazilians playing in Champions League Matchday Two, among them Andersons and Edus you’ve never heard of, Robertos and Alexes who will never get within a mile of their national team. Dynamo Kiev could take the field against Manchester United with Diogo Rincon, Carlos Correa and Giacomace Kleber; Besiktas against Liverpool with Bobo, Marcio Nobre and Ricardinho; Schalke against Chelsea with Rafinha and Marcelo Bordon; Slavia Prague against Arsenal with Rogerio Gaucho. Even in their own country, people might struggle to recognise these Samba Boys.

Should Michel Platini, the Uefa president, get his wish and cut the number of English clubs in the Champions League from four to three the situation will deteriorate further, for apart from Celtic’s Lee Naylor there are no Englishmen at leading non-English clubs. That said, if Arsenal were the English club to drop out the effect would be negligible: the Gunners field XIs comprised entirely of foreigners so often it is no longer news, and the only English names on the ‘A’ player list they submitted to Uefa are those of Theo Walcott and Justin Hoyte. “I’ve thought about it a few times,” said Ferguson. “I’ve wondered whether it has an overall, lasting effect. I think there has to be an impact of some sort, the number of foreign players in our game.”

Ferguson has just sent another batch of young English players out on loan to give them the first-team football they cannot find at Manchester United. It was also a demonstration that he is confident about the depth of his squad and he made a surprisingly definite and early announcement that United will not be entering the transfer market in the mid-season window. “Definitely not,” said Ferguson. “We won’t be strengthening in January, I can assure you of that. The ones who’ve gone on loan are only going until January anyway and our squad will be stronger by then. I’m expecting Ji-Sung Park back from injury and Hargreaves will be back by that time, surely. Gary Neville should be back. Michael Carrick should be back. And the players who have covered for them have done really well. I’m not too worried about injuries. We’ve got enough good bodies to fill the red jersey.”

Ferguson is looking for three points in Kiev “because that would put us in a great position to qualify [from the group stage] and get it done early”. Though Dynamo, he felt, should have defeated rather than lost against Sporting Lisbon in their last game, and “it’s one of those where we’ll go with a bit of caution”, he was as anxious about the travelling to Ukraine as the opposition, with Carlos Tevez having flown to Venezuela on international duty last week and Cristiano Ronaldo and Nani having done likewise to Kazakhstan. There is, of course, one way to minimise his players’ air miles in international weeks: use more Englishmen. Ferguson would, if only more were good enough.

Anybody here speak English?

‘More Scots than Englishmen played in the last round of Champions League games and that’s amazing’
Sir Alex Ferguson

- The 32 teams involved in the Champions League matches of October 2/3 fi elded players from 60 different nations (including substitutes who actually played). The Old Firm had 13 Scots between them, while Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Celtic managed only 12 Englishmen. Brazil, with 53 players, was the nation best represented

- Those English players were Paul Scholes, Michael Carrick, Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand (all Manchester United), Ashley Cole, Joe Cole, John Terry, Steve Sidwell (all Chelsea), Jamie Carragher, Peter Crouch, Steven Gerrard (all Liverpool), and Lee Naylor (Celtic). Arsenal had no English players. Of these 12, Scholes and Carragher have already quit international football

Players by nationality
53 Brazil, 34 France, 30 Italy, 29 Spain, 23 Portugal, 20 Argentina, Germany, 16 Romania, 15 Turkey, Czech Rep, 14 Serbia, 13 Scotland, Holland, 12 England, 11 Ivory Coast, 10 Ukraine