One moment of composure from Theo Walcott flicked a switch in English football. Where there was fear, there came belief. Where there had been caution, there was joy. Now we must hope that the transformation triggered by a well-mannered teen-ager lasts for more than one gloriously unexpected night.

Perhaps Fabio Capello was always going to restore some pride into the England team. What none of us had expected was that he would do so in one extraordinary evening.

We thought that the road back under this sergeant-majorish Italian was going to be long, hard and dull. This was a man who bans margarine from the dinner table and locks the players in their rooms all day.

Instead he gave us a hat-trick from Walcott, whose selection was a bold statement, in the most joyous away-day with England since that famous journey to Munich with Sven-Göran Eriksson. For the time being at least, the England team and their followers are not a bad joke on the march.

Englishmen gave association football to Croatia in 1880. Last night they stole back the ball from the moment that Walcott looked up and crisply shot into the far corner midway through the first half for his first of three goals. Best of all, they showed how to cherish possession and to play as though the game was invented to be enjoyed, although it helped that Croatia were imploding at the time.

Perhaps the presence of Walcott, a 19-year-old born to sprint, in place of David Beckham made the rest of his teammates feel younger. The new star of English football is polite, eager and runs like the wind, and there is every reason, given the club he is at and the good people who surround him, to feel that he will stay that way.

The bigger question is whether the rest of the England team will suffer the usual recidivist tendencies or build on the gains made last night; particularly on the rediscovery that playing for their country is something that can bring rewards rather than a miserable interlude during which they long to be back at their clubs.

Absent friends such as Steven Gerrard and Michael Owen will have watched on as Wayne Rooney played keepy-uppy and thought: “I want some of that.”

As England move forward under Capello, it is hard to underestimate the importance of the mental fillip this will have given to the entire operation, from the manager to the players and on to the supporters.

It may have been only one performance, one step, but at least the players can be sure that the build-up to the next match against Croatia will not feature pussycats in place of the three lions, as had been the case in one Zagreb newspaper.

The discrepancy of a country with not much more than half of London’s population repeatedly outplaying - no, totally outclassing - England mercifully found closure. Some balance is restored between nations, one of whom spends £757 million on a national stadium while the other borrows a ground that would barely pass the health and safety checks in England.

The disabled section at the Mak-simir Stadium, primarily the home of Dynamo Zagreb, is a ludicrously potholed area and one boy in a wheel-chair turned up to find that he needed to clamber up steps. He promptly stood up, lifted his chair and carried it. As it happened, it was not the only miracle we saw last night.

“Visiting teams are overwhelmed by the beauty of the place,” Slaven Bilic, the Croatia coach, had said with thick sarcasm. But, to everyone’s surprise, it was his team who could not cope with the fevered atmosphere.

It was Croatia who lost their discipline, Croatia who lost the game and lost their grip over England’s psyche. The jeers of the home fans at half-time show that it is not only England supporters who mix impatience with unrealistic expectations. Bilic had been working hard to counter that pressure in the build-up but his team cracked, throwing out elbows and arms to block England’s counter-attacks. No wonder Bilic passed up the West Ham United job with a heavy heart.

As he starts the inquest, there is a danger that England followers will be carried away into believing that the national team are back among the world’s leading teams; that Walcott will do this in every game and England will march on to the World Cup without a hiccup.

The Arsenal winger is at an age, and playing in a position, where inconsistency is inevitable. And nor should the second half disguise some of the early defensive twitches that required John Terry to reprieve Ashley Cole on numerous occasions. Or that Gareth Barry can be caught in possession.

If there is another word of caution, it is that England could win the next five games on the bounce and still only be back to where they should be; a half-decent team bound for the World Cup expecting nothing more than to be competitive.

It is only in a tournament, in South Africa, when Capello will truly be capable of showing if he is worth £6 million and if, quite frankly, he is more the real deal than Eriksson. The Swede had Munich. Capello’s mission now is to make sure a famous victory in qualification is not his England highlight.