Rio Ferdinand said yesterday that the England team resembled a circus until the arrival of Fabio Capello as manager in January, with more interest in discussing designer clothes than achieving success on the pitch. The Manchester United defender, who will captain England against Belarus in their World Cup qualifying match in Minsk this evening in the absence of the injured John Terry, conceded that the players became obsessed by their celebrity lifestyles to the detriment of their performances under Sven-Göran Eriksson and Steve McClaren.

Ferdinand’s confession was focused largely on the 2006 World Cup, when Eriksson allowed the players’ wives and girlfriends to reside close to the team hotel in the German spa town of Baden-Baden, but it also implicated McClaren, who continued to indulge the players during the failed attempt to qualify for this summer’s European Championship.

“I think we got caught up in all the hype,” Ferdinand said. “We became celebrities in terms of the WAG situation. There was a big show around the England squad. It was like a theatre unfolding, and football became a secondary element to the main event. People were worrying more about what people were wearing and where we were going, rather than the England football team.

“We were caught in the bubble ourselves. In Baden-Baden, walking around, there were paparazzi everywhere, our families were there. When you step back it was like a circus. As a squad we were a bit too open, going out in and around Baden-Baden, and probably had too much contact with families.

“You’re in a tournament and you don’t get many tournaments in your career. To give yourself the best chance you have to be focused. It wasn’t just the WAGs, but families being really close, us being close to you guys, the paparazzi situation. The football wasn’t really separated from the rest of our lives.”

Ferdinand contrasted such freedom with the far stricter regime of Capello, who has made increased professionalism and discipline the key tenets of his reign. In his first meeting with the players, the Italian gave them a list of rules that were unheard of in the past, establishing a dress code, setting strict meal times and banning family, friends and agents from the team hotel.

“This is a very, very professional regime,” Ferdinand said. “Very result-orientated, very much like a lot of our clubs. The results come a long way before the performances. That’s been enhanced by the new regime and new management that we’ve got. You see how he is on the training ground, in our meetings, that there’s a winning mentality there. That’s what he’s putting over to the squad.

“This regime is very watertight. We have to take everything we can from the manager because of his vast experience. If we can do that, England will go in the right direction. I don’t want to speak too soon, but you can see that we’re at the start of something and, hopefully, there will be bigger rewards than we have had in the past.”

Capello rejected the assertion that he inherited an undisciplined group of players, but he has made it clear to them that he expects the highest standards of behaviour. “I don’t know what happened before,” the manager said. “If Rio said it, then possibly. I think every manager decides the line. I always, when I work, decide on a different line. In Italy, one line. In Spain, different.

“When I arrived here I spoke with the players and said to them normal things. Not strange things. When I was a club manager, then sometimes during long training camps — 10 or 15 days — it was possible to meet the women, the wives or the official girlfriends. Not strange girlfriends.”

Capello’s methods are already paying off and a win this evening would establish a benchmark for England’s best start to a World Cup qualifying campaign of four successive victories. Wayne Bridge will replace his injured Chelsea team-mate, Ashley Cole, who has a strained right hamstring, at left back, and Steven Gerrard is expected to move to the left side of midfield. A return to 4-4-2 from a starting formation of 4-3-3 will be the other change from Saturday’s 5-1 win over Kazakhstan.