James Lawton: Seeds of Sapporo victory were sown in the shame of Saitama

It is time to relegate by one notch the battle ribbon of Munich. What England did to the World Cup favourites Argentina in Sapporo yesterday was not nearly so spectacular as their thrashing of Germany last September, but it had an integrity of performance and intelligence that spoke of rather more than one extraordinary break-out.

Indeed, this was perhaps more than a famous victory in the football war with Argentina that was declared by Sir Alf Ramsey at Wembley 36 years ago. It was, just maybe, a rite of passage at the highest level of the game for coach Sven Goran Eriksson and the team he has been required to stitch together amid the dislocation of injuries to key players.

Whatever happens now, the Star of Sapporo deserves to stand on its own. It represents an achievement which could not be assessed solely on the course of 90-odd riveting minutes.

To get a proper measure of it, you had to go back to Saitama last Sunday evening and the leaden, fortuitous draw with Sweden.

Then you would not have given a single piece of sushi for Eriksson's chances of re-animating and re-organising his team after a performance that was deeply depressing in both execution and tactical ambition. It was, technically, the worst game in that first rush of the World Cup. It was sterile to the point of cluelessness, and, if Sweden were desperately one-dimensional England, unquestionably, were considerably worse. Yesterday England – and Eriksson's authority – were firmly re-instated in the great tournament.

The team and their coach reminded those of us who went into the Japanese night after the Swedish misadventure muttering about a squandered mission that it is possible, given the right degree of honest self-analysis, to turn a truly poor performance away from the gates of disaster and into the motivation for real redemption. It came with a trumpet blast of conviction. A lot of ground was covered in five days, and long before the end of yesterday's triumph it was plain that much of the work had been extremely sure-footed.

At Saitama Eriksson seemed to be offering to a dismayed and deeply sceptical audience something straight from the rag-bag of platitudes. He declared: "We've played one game, we didn't win, we didn't lose, now we have to go forward with faith." But faith in what? Long-ball optimism? Deeply flawed defence? A virtually non-existent midfield? Against the Argentina of Veron and Ortega, Batistuta and Crespo it seemed like a recipe for fresh humiliation. But England yesterday thrived on Eriksson's new dish, which had vital added ingredients in the bite and the calm of Nicky Butt.

Butt brought steel to England's previously shadowy midfield and when Trevor Sinclair replaced the impressively functional but not madly creative Owen Hargreaves there was width and more than a little invention. England had a new balance – and verve. They also had, perhaps most significantly of all, a Paul Scholes operating at the top of his marvellously committed game, and the timely return by Michael Owen to the kind of penetrative zeal which made him a fully-fledged Argentinian nightmare in Saint-Etienne four years ago.

Apart from creating the penalty which David Beckham converted with a brisk certainty that was a reminder of quite how far he has travelled personally from that ultimately ill-starred night in France, Owen hit a post, a shot which plainly landed like a hand-grenade in the Argentinian psyche, and was clearly at the top of a game guaranteed to undermine the South Americans' assumption that they were heading to formal membership of the last 16.

Most gratifying of all, though, for Eriksson was surely an authentic sense of a team coming together. The defence, so jumpy and porous against Sweden, progressively shredded the belief of Veron, his gifted replacement Pablo Aimar, and Ariel Ortega that in the end they would find a way to unlock David Seaman's fiercely defended goal. Danny Mills, the goat against Sweden, became a lion of intensity and, if not entirely error-free, a sharply increased source of confidence. Rio Ferdinand had perhaps his best game for England and was strongly supported by Sol Campbell. David Seaman oozed a veteran's savvy.

Certainly there is more than enough evidence that Nigeria, a talented but surely discouraged team after two promising but totally unrewarded performances, are unlikely to be an insuperable barrier to England's progress next Wednesday in Osaka. Whatever the psychological health of the African team, England announced they have the means and the will to shape their own fate. For all Argentina's possession of the ball and English territory in the second half, they never really suggested any great potential to put killing pressure on England's defence.

Argentina, unquestionably, were below their recently formidable standard, but England did much more than catch some people's idea of the best team in the world on an off-day. They re-made themselves as a team of both force and wit, and the confidence that has been created within the dressing room can only augur well for a degree of success in the Far East unimaginable last Sunday night. Optimism, though, needs to be kept on the bridle, a task which for England has been made infinitely easier by the arrival of Eriksson.

He has already proved himself a formidable fighter against hubris, and it is a talent he is not likely to put aside, especially now that he has shown those of us who raised doubts so recently that he may well be able to handle the bad days as adroitly as he does the good.