Seventy sunny, soporific minutes had elapsed yesterday when Frankfurt resonated to the sound of 30,000 Anglo-Saxon voices chanting Wayne Rooney’s name, and how England need their convalescent talisman.

With Michael Owen out of sorts and substituted, it took an own goal by Paraguay’s captain, Carlos Gamarra, to prevent the opening match in the World Cup from becoming yet another false start. England’s modest record in their first game in international championships is such that they would have settled for this scoreline beforehand, but it was hardly intoxicating stuff. About on a par with the local liebfraumilch. Defeat was never on the cards against limited opposition, but there could have been a damaging concession of two points had not Carlos Paredes spurned a straightforward scoring chance after an hour.

A win is a win was Sven-Göran Eriksson’s attitude, but England could and should have won much more convincingly than this, especially after the South Americans had lost their goalkeeper, injured, inside eight minutes. The afternoon had begun so well, with a goal after only two minutes and 45 seconds, but England were anything but inspired by their early success. Their work was laboured and their passing shoddy throughout. The long, high ball to the stratospheric head of Peter Crouch will not cut it at this level and Rooney’s clever invention is needed as soon as possible.

In mitigation, perhaps it was partly a case of stage fright. On the coach, travelling from their hotel to the stadium, reality would have hit the players like a hammer blow. This was it, the thing they had worked so hard towards. It was, as Sir Alex Ferguson once said, squeaky-bum time.

As ever, the fans did their best to make their heroes feel at home, turning Frankfurt into a good old Premiership bearpit. The roar was Richter scale stuff when the England players ran out to the strains of Robbie Williams’s Let Me Entertain You. For a while they did, but not for long, and Germany v Costa Rica it wasn’t.

What a waste of such a promising start. David Beckham is said to be wearing a new gel, not on his hair but on that productive right boot, to give him extra purchase. True or not, his first free kick, taken from wide on the left, brought a reprise of Jamaica’s fit of the vapours at Old Trafford last week. With John Terry lurking dangerously, Gamarra rose above everybody in the goalmouth and planted a firm header past his own startled goalkeeper.

Poor Justo Villa was still recovering from the shock when he collapsed as he attempted a clearance and hobbled off, to be replaced by Aldo Bobadilla. Villa, who plays his club football in Argentina, for Newell’s Old Boys, is a top-class keeper. Bobadilla is from the cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof school and his first touch of the ball was panic personified.

England enjoyed a good first 20 minutes or so, passing and moving in purposefully assertive fashion and they might have had a second goal, courtesy of a glorious through-ball from Steven Gerrard.

Liverpool’s finest, having shaken off back trouble to play, was outstanding in two different roles — first sitting in front of the back four, then advancing to pick up the dangerous Roberto Acuna. In creative mode, he bisected the Paraguayan defence, only for Owen’s control to let him down. England’s principal goalscorer insists that he is fully recovered from injury and back to his best, but not here he wasn’t, not by a long way.

Paul Robinson was rarely called upon, but he could have done without the mistake by Terry that enabled Paredes to shoot from distance. Of much greater concern, however, was the 19th-minute booking Gerrard received for a foul on Paredes that was mistimed, rather than malicious. As if keen to even things up, the Mexican referee, who was baffling in his inconsistency, promptly cautioned Nelson Valdez for a tackle from behind on Beckham, but then chose not to show a yellow card for the worst foul of the three, by Paredes on Gerrard.

England never looked like killing the game off before half-time, as they should have done. Instead their passing became sloppy and too often directed at Crouch’s forehead. For such a tall man, the Liverpool totem is not particularly good in the air and prefers the ball played to him on the ground, but you would scarcely have guessed it from the service he received yesterday.

The first half slowly petered out and when the match came back to life again, after an hour, it was Paraguay who revived it. First Paredes might have equalised, after a cross from Carlos Bonet had been punched out to him by Robinson, but he failed to keep his shot down, then Valdez tested England’s keeper from the inside-right channel.

And so it was that the fans started calling for Rooney. When television showed him sitting impatiently on the bench, you could sense the smoke coming out of a certain Glaswegian manager’s ears. Any more of that, and the BBC will be banned again by Manchester United.

One of the substitutions Eriksson did make saw Stewart Downing replace Owen 11 minutes into the second half. It is always good to see a winger playing for England and the Middlesbrough man made a couple of promising breaks. Indeed, he featured in England’s best passage of play when Beckham found him with a raking pass and Downing set up Lampard, whose drive from 22 yards brought the save of the match by Bobadilla. Nice, but we could have done with a lot more in similar vein.

Perhaps we’ll get it against Trinidad & Tobago in Nuremberg on Thursday. The fans will be hoping for a few minutes of Rooney sooner rather than later, and raucously celebrated every minute of his warm-down after the match here.