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It will all be different the next time these two meet. There will be some real atmosphere for a start, rather than Saturday’s listless boredom. Twenty minutes in, one local boy in the plush seats was engrossed in his PlayStation.

There will be a real England team rather than these ineffective stand-ins. And there could be a real World Cup prize at stake rather than the huge jewel-encrusted boxes presented by the Qatari hosts to the bemused captains. There we were thinking England’s 2018 bidders were the ones with the handouts.

The next time they meet it will be all change — at least we hope so — apart from one important thing: the efficiency and obduracy of Brazil.

So drilled are the South Americans, so organised, so calculating of risk that they might have been choreographed by José Mourinho. Dunga must have gone to the same school, all the way down to telling his two midfield sentries to foul high up the field if the opposition are breaking (not that there was much danger of that from England).

An instructive moment in this game came when Brazil’s attacking trident thrust at England. For perhaps the only time all evening, Matthew Upson put a foot in. England looked ready to launch a counter-attack only to see an impenetrable barrier of yellow shirts on the halfway line. “When you get the ball, they move quickly and always get eight players behind the ball,” Fabio Capello said. Being Italian, he meant it as a compliment.

This is not a vintage Brazil, at least not yet. It took them most of the first half to realise just how abject England were without Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Rio Ferdinand and all the other regulars.

But one thing Brazil will not be exposed for is naivety. “That’s the way we play,” Dunga said, unapologetically. “England had 11 men behind the ball. They need to learn how to dribble. That’s what you have to do. Teams are more compact these days.”

While the heart sinks a little at such talk of compression and organisation from the coach of Brazil — if we cannot rely on the South Americans for the Joga Bonito, where do we turn? — Dunga can hardly be blamed for playing to his team’s strengths. He has no time for prettiness for its own sake. “Specialists in losing,” is how he has referred to the 1982 Brazilians, who famously lost the tournament but won our hearts.

Dunga has made Brazil so tough that Capello rates them the best team in the world. Spain? The England manager sees a fragility in Vicente Del Bosque’s side, comparable to Arsenal’s, even if his players have proved incapable of exposing it. Detecting a weakness in Brazil is like finding one in a brick wall. Too solid to punch through, too tall to pass over, it is built to last.

To be passed off the pitch by Brazil is not unexpected, but England were inferior physically, too, brushed off in tackle after tackle. “We were not strong enough,” Capello said. It came down, literally, to size.

Those dazzling golden shirts come only in XL these days. Brazil’s first-choice team — of whom eight started in Doha — features eight players of 6ft or more. Just as policemen get younger, Brazilians get taller, according to their coach. “It’s about the Brazilian population because the height is increasing and this brought a good stature and physical agility,” Dunga said.

Whether it is true that the residents of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo are taller than their forebears is a study for an anthropology PhD rather than the sports pages — our research took us only as far as Wikipedia and the revelation that the average British male is 8cm taller than his Brazilian counterpart — but Dunga has been able to pack his team with men the stature of Rio’s Corcovado.

It was the relatively small Nilmar, “only” 5ft 11in, who stood out here. While most of England’s fringe players shrivelled, Brazil’s stand-in took his chance. When Elano landed a diagonal ball on his head and he steered it past Ben Foster, Nilmar had scored five of Brazil’s past six goals. He would have had another had Foster not upended him soon after to concede the penalty that Luis Fabiano sent flying towards the Persian Gulf.

The Villarreal winger-cum-forward, deputising for the unfit Robinho, made the first of his nine international appearances six years ago.

It has taken time for him to blossom, but seven months before a World Cup is a fine moment to announce yourself. It was not so much a corridor of opportunity he exploited between Wes Brown and Upson, but a gaping chasm. “Now we have many options,” Dunga said. Put it this way, Ronaldinho is now third choice for the left side of attack.

We should note that Brazil are not impregnable. Gilberto Silva is ageing and there is no obvious stand-in for Fabiano should he lose form or fitness. But they look formidable. And we have not even got round to mentioning Kaká.