THERE will be no Saipan moment for England this summer, no reason to agitate about poor conditioning or inadequate facilities. No team meeting will degenerate into a slanging match between David Beckham and Sven-Göran Eriksson and no one will be going home early (Wayne Rooney excepted, perhaps). As Gary Neville reaffirmed yesterday, there can be “no excuses” if another tournament slips away.

Keane would approve of England’s preparations for the World Cup finals, from the quality of their training pitch and the supply of Jaffa Cakes in their hotel to the provision of laptop and plasma-screen television for every player. There can be no legislation for broken bones or an unhelpful blast from the referee’s whistle, but the FA has left little else to chance.

Paul Robinson is at the vanguard of such meticulous attention to detail. The England goalkeeper has expressed concern at the quality of the official ball being used in matches in Germany, but the issue has not crept upon him. At Tottenham Hotspur last season, he was familiarising himself with the vagaries of the adidas Team Geist Matchball, minimising the opportunity for embarrassment.

No competition is complete without a controversy about the ball — too round, too light, too susceptible to movement in flight — but Robinson’s complaint has been echoed by Jens Lehmann, the Arsenal and Germany goalkeeper. Beckham or Roberto Carlos curling a fizzing shot into the top corner is one thing, but Robinson claims that even England’s yeomen have suddenly been transformed into free-kick specialists.

“I don’t know if it’s an unfair advantage for forwards or whether it’s just a difficult ball for goalkeepers,” he said. “The ball is in two pieces, it’s glued together, it moves a lot, it’s very light — it’s like a volleyball — and when it’s wet, it’s even worse. It’s as if it has a plastic coating that covers it. I know Lehmann has already been saying stuff about it and it is very goalkeeper unfriendly.

“It doesn’t even need to be a Ronaldinho or a Roberto Carlos. They’ll be moving about all over the place — and even with that lot out there, if they don’t strike the ball totally cleanly, it can fly anywhere. To be fair, I had a bit of foresight about it not being what we were used to in the Premiership and with four or five weeks to go until the end of the season I got my agent to get half a dozen of them to me.

“I mixed them in with my training balls at Spurs, so I’ve been getting used to them for a while and then three more weeks with England. I don’t think you can start doing things you don’t normally do to compensate — that’s when things go wrong — but I’ve given myself the best opportunity.”

The same applies to penalties. They have been practised at the pine-scented Mittelbergstadion in Buhlertal — wonder of wonder for England supporters, Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole, Owen Hargreaves, Stewart Downing and Jermain Defoe all stroked home successful kicks yesterday before Jermaine Jenas let the side down — and so, too, has saving them.

It was Robinson who denied Jenas, his clubmate, and an apprehensive nation can console itself with the thought that opponents have been scrutinised and their weaknesses sought.

“There is research that can be done,” Robinson said. “There is video football that you can get hold of, there is research that you can get hold of and there are records that you can get hold of. I am giving myself every opportunity and the best chance of saving penalties if we concede one during a game or if it goes to a shoot-out. I have my sources.”

No England squad have arrived at a World Cup more rigorously in tune with what confronts them. “We have technicians in the England camp and I have got a DVD of Paraguay, their set-pieces and their corners,” Robinson said. “We are all going to be well briefed on our opposition, who is playing and how. We’ll have a meeting, watch a video and then, as individuals, we’ll get DVDs to watch in our rooms.”

He does not spare himself. Hungary scored a blistering long-range goal at Old Trafford last week, but Robinson was not content to admire it. “Everyone says it was a great goal, but if you take it two steps back, it was my kick that went out into touch for a throw-in,” he said. “If that had gone upfield it would have affected the game in a different way. Goalkeepers are their own biggest critics in that way.”

England are not going with the flow in Baden-Baden. As Keane put it, only dead fishes do that.