Like a lone policeman trying to break up a rave, Fabio Capello found himself last night leading a one-man crusade to stop Englishmen getting overexcited about the World Cup finals.

Actually, that’s not quite right. Emile Heskey did his bit for sobriety by repeatedly tripping over his feet with the goal gaping but, otherwise, this was the sort of occasion liable to turn a country giddy with thoughts of what might, just might, happen in South Africa.

Capello, being Capello, will have not just noted the imperfections but logged them for future dressing-downs with his players. Even amid the glee last night, there was a fierce bark at Gareth Barry for not being quick enough to the tackle. The manner of Croatia’s solitary goal will no doubt be poured over until a culprit is found.

There will be a time soon enough, too, when the rest of us will have to weigh up the failings that rank England as probable quarter-finalists, possible semi-finalists and, well, let’s not get too carried away.

Those weaknesses — between the posts, at right back and No 9 — are brilliantly disguised on a night such as this. It will be a miracle if they remain unexposed by Brazil or Spain in a nerve-racking semi-final.

But that is for then. This was a night to enjoy the best England performance at the new Wembley, the best anywhere for quite some time. A night when the big corporate bowl felt like a raucous football stadium rather than a place designed for the suits to enjoy canapés and Chablis at half-time.

It was an occasion when Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard shared the goals and the honours, providing vindication of Capello’s midfield structure. When Aaron Lennon played so well that a place in the squad next summer is now his to lose. When Michael Owen finally kissed goodbye to his slender hopes and Capello was left to ruminate that the main problems unsolved, in goal and at right back, are the ones that he can do almost nothing about.

Fresh difficulties may present themselves via loss of form or injury. English players have a habit of turning up at tournaments exhausted. The likelihood of key players such as Gerrard, Lampard and Wayne Rooney being involved in long, hard fights for the league championship and Champions League will have Capello travelling the country with fingers crossed.

Such is the swagger about Rooney in an England shirt these days, the fizz in his passes, the joy in his boots, that it was tempting to kidnap him on his way out of Wembley and lock him somewhere safe between now and next June. Anything to ensure that he is not prone to the sort of metatarsal injury that curtailed his Euro 2004, when he limped off against Portugal and took England’s hopes with him.

Anything to make certain that he is not going into the tournament in South Africa so short of fitness that, frustrated, he stamps on an opponent’s groin as he did in the 2006 World Cup finals.

Because while no player is bigger than the team, Rooney can give a pretty good impression when he is in the mood — which has been in just about every match under Capello, even if Gerrard, Lampard and Lennon were the headline-grabbers last night.

It is not just Rooney’s eight goals in qualifying — which became nine when he seized upon the miskick by the Croatia goalkeeper — but the manner in which he has blossomed into the playmaker’s role that has been denied him in the last couple of seasons at Manchester United, where he has often had to play wide.

Rooney’s goal was the final blow on an evening when England qualified with an ease that can only speak well of their chances next summer. In the recently published book, Why England Lose, the theory is put forward that a qualifying record is no pointer to how a team will perform in the tournament. Perhaps that is borne out by the statistics, but far better to qualify like this than having to bite our nails as in years past.

In the past decade, we have endured the nauseatingly nervous play-off against Scotland under Kevin Keegan to reach Euro 2000; David Beckham’s late free kick against Greece two years later; the chaos of the pre-match strike over Rio Ferdinand before we went to Istanbul before Euro 2004. Even on the relatively straightforward road to the 2006 finals England hit the bump of a 1-0 defeat by Northern Ireland, and Beckham being sent off against Austria on the day we qualified.

The assured nature of England’s progress under Capello offers no guarantees and even the nine goals hammered past Croatia in two matches must be set against that team’s shocking decline. The next eight months may throw up fresh challenges but Capello must forgive us if, at Wembley last night, we decided to indulge ourselves and say, “To hell with the reservations, roll on the tournament.”

No one was saying that England were going to win the World Cup, but we were looking forward to it starting.