At the airport, the local photographer got the money shot, David Beckham shaking hands with English football's reason for coming to the Caribbean, Jack Warner, the Fifa vice-president and federation kingpin on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago. At the Hasely Crawford Stadium, the locals reacted happily and noisily to the sight of Englishmen training under the careful observation of Fabio Capello and his abundant team of staff and coaches.

Yet the most remarkable player to feature in Capello's first season in charge could walk the streets here, or at home, in utter anonymity. If Joe Lewis, the third-choice goalkeeper, plays so much as one minute for England against Trinidad & Tobago tomorrow night, history will be made.

Lewis is the goalkeeper for Peterborough United, which means that, technically, he is still a player from the fourth tier of English football. And no player from that level has been capped by an England manager. Next season, promoted Peterborough will start life in Coca-Cola League One, the third tier, and Lewis's moment will have passed; but with Capello planning to use his first and second-choice goalkeepers, David James, of Portsmouth, and Joe Hart, of Manchester City, tomorrow, the 20-year-old from Bungay, on the Norfolk border with Suffolk, is an injury away from a place in the record books. As the England players discovered to some alarm yesterday, the pitch at the stadium is an accident waiting to happen, so watch this space.

Lewis was preparing for a holiday in Mexico when the call came last week to say that a recent 45 minutes of football with the England under-21 team had so impressed the watching Capello that he was being elevated to the full squad in place of the injured Chris Kirkland, of Wigan Athletic. Lewis thought it was a prank, but was slightly confused by the timing. It was six in the evening, too early for the usual suspects among his Peterborough team-mates, such as Aaron Mclean, the striker. A follow-up conversation confirmed the news as genuine, and within two hours a car had arrived to take him to the England training base in Watford.

“I had no time to even be shocked, and that was for the best,” Lewis said. “I grabbed a bag, threw a few things in and went. When I got there it was very relaxed. I didn't feel uptight when I walked in because I knew a few of the lads from the under-21 team, like Gabriel Agbonlahor, Tom Huddlestone and Joe Hart, plus David Bentley and Dean Ashton from Norwich, and Peter Crouch. There were quite a few friendly faces, but then the Chelsea and Manchester United boys started arriving, players that had been in the Champions League final. I'd had a week off with no exercise, so the next day, probably only the adrenalin got me through it. Training was a high standard, so I had to be on my game.

“These guys are so sharp, when they get a chance, they take it and you cannot afford to switch off, even for a minute. I'm used to big, ugly, League Two strikers.”

And not even that used to them. At 15, Lewis was the youngest player to get a first-team squad number at Norwich City, but his career stagnated under Glenn Roeder, the manager, after that. At the start of this season he accepted a loan move to Morecambe in a desperate bid to revitalise his career. “I was struggling to get a club,” Lewis said. “I was in the Norwich reserves, nobody wanted me and they wouldn't take a gamble on me because I was an inexperienced goalkeeper who hadn't played any games.

“When Sammy McIlroy, the manager at Morecambe, came in, it was a big decision. My agent said Morecambe had just got promoted and I might have too much to do. He thought it could set me back if we were losing 5-0 each week. I thought if we were under pressure I had the chance to be the star. I had a couple of good games against Peterborough and the move came from there. I don't know why it didn't work for me at Norwich. Ask Roeder. I wanted to stay, but I didn't play a competitive first-team game and it was hard to get motivated.”

It is possible to view the selection of Lewis from two angles. Either Capello has been so appalled at the standard of English goalkeeping that he feels he might as well pick a promising kid from Peterborough as any of his rivals in the Premier League; or this is one of the benefits of appointing a coach without preconceptions. Capello liked what he saw in Lewis, and the status of his club, therefore, was an irrelevance. How refreshing.

That the first opinion may be harsh on English goalkeepers is evidenced by the selection of Hart, who is likely to get his England debut at some stage against Trinidad & Tobago after an impressive first season with Manchester City. The trauma surrounding Scott Carson against Croatia, and the subsequent return of James, the 37-year-old, may have given a false impression of the talent available. Certainly, Carson has struggled to recover from the horror of his first competitive match and the blunder that helped to cost England a place at Euro 2008, but if Hart is eased in, he may have more of a chance of withstanding the pressure.

“I will prepare as if I am going to start, as I always do,” Hart said. “Capello lets you get on with it. Every manager I have known has not really said much to me, and I take that as a compliment. When they have to take you to one side and cuddle you, that's when you should worry.”