Capello shaken by boos culture

Considering that in the space of his career Fabio Capello has been on the wrong-end of a Mafia-style plot to deny his Roma team success and given that he shares Vito Corleone's attitude when it comes to getting in touch with his emotions it would be fair to say that it takes a lot to upset old Il Capo. But he was upset on Saturday afternoon.

So upset, you felt, that his rudimentary English could not keep pace as he tried to articulate his emotions. So upset that in his eagerness to condemn those who booed Ashley Cole, he twice referred to the left-back as "Ashley Young" in a television interview. As Freudian slips go the Aston Villa winger could either surmise that he is prominent in the thoughts of the England manager or fatally associated in Capello's mind with catastrophic mistakes on a football pitch.

As a straight-forward football man, Capello found it hard to understand why a section of a Wembley crowd would turn upon an England player so viciously and with so much undisguised glee as they did when Cole's misjudged back-pass gifted Kazakhstan a goal. With the Football Association understandably twitchy about falling out with the fans who fill their £757m stadium – and many of those fans were equally outraged at the booing – it was the correct stance from the England manager even if he was not as outspoken as Rio Ferdinand.

"You have to support the team," Capello said. "It is not good to boo one player." The trouble is that if Capello wanted truly to understand the modern-day mentality of the Wembley crowd he would have to take a journey far beyond the pitch and into the mind of an English public, some of whom cannot distinguish between Cole the footballer and Cole, errant husband of the fragrant Cheryl, whom they read about in gossip magazines. It is a sorry old state of affairs.

Put it this way, the critical faculty of parts of the England crowd on Saturday could be judged best by two moments. Firstly, the mindless booing of Cole for his mistake in the 68th minute that gifted Zhambyl Kukeyev a goal and then the ludicrously over-the-top reception for David Beckham. Truly, as old Goldenballs came on we might as well have been at the premiere for High School Musical 3 for the teeny devotion and embarrassing shrieks of approval.

As England's very own, slightly more wrinkly, Zac Efron shuffled up and down the right wing for his 106th cap you were left to contemplate Cole's fate. There are, of course, plenty of reasons to boo Cole. Arsenal supporters, for instance, have ample justification but only when their team plays Chelsea. Those Tottenham fans who witnessed him turn his back on the referee Mike Riley after felling Alan Hutton were justified in letting rip that day. But not when he plays for England and not for a simple mistake. In football's history the errors of players are borne by fans as a collective tragedy, more evidence for long-suffering supporters of the sheer injustice of the hand they have been dealt. Not the basis for personal recrimination.

The trouble is that some England fans are so high on their own righteousness that they cannot resist becoming part of the story and their track record of booing their own – Frank Lampard, Peter Crouch and Owen Hargreaves – shows that their judgement has hardly been the best. The best you can say about them is that there were plenty who tried to drown out the booing with applause.

All of which overshadowed a more interesting tactical debate that the 4-3-3 formation first implemented by Capello was superceded by the 4-4-2 system of the second half in which England scored five goals. The 4-3-3 formation was not a total failure and it should be remembered that it was deployed against a fresh, eager Kazakhstan team who faded badly in the second half. As with Andorra's 11 men-behind-the-ball, England had to wait for their opposition to tire before they could strike.

Now it would appear that Capello will be minded to start with 4-4-2 against Belarus on Wednesday. Given that he will surely want the insurance of Gareth Barry in midfield that would mean one from Steven Gerrard and Lampard in the middle. On current performances, against Croatia and Kazakhstan, that one has to be Lampard. Gerrard could be deployed on the left wing but what is the point of playing him out of position again? He is a fabulous player, a difficult man to leave out but better that than disrupt the balance of a team that did so well in Croatia on the counter-attack.

Choosing to leave Gerrard out will be regarded as cataclysmic for the player. It should not be. It does not mean his England career is over. It should be no great cause for offence. It just means that Gerrard will have to wait his time until either form or fitness means Lampard has to drop out of the team. No great drama, simply a sign of England's strength that they can afford to have Gerrard on the bench. Once Capello grasps the nettle and does it, the English public will discover that leaving out arguably the best player of his generation will not bring life as we know grinding to a halt.

Having stood their ground for 52 minutes, Kazakhstan conceded the first two from harmless set-pieces – first a Rio Ferdinand header and then an own goal from Alexander Kuchma. After Cole's mistake, Rooney (right) scored a simple header and a close-range side-foot before England's best goal. That came from Emile Heskey's classy flick into the path of Jermain Defoe, who finished well.

Simple in the end. It might leave Capello with a difficult decision to make this week but at the top of World Cup qualifying Group Six with three victories he already has a better start than Steve McClaren managed to the Euro 2008 campaign. It was also an afternoon mercifully short on Borat references given the identity of the opposition although even Kazakhstan's most famous cultural envoy would have had difficulty getting his head around the strange traditions of many of England's fans on Saturday.

England (4-3-3): James (Portsmouth); Brown (Manchester United), Ferdinand (Manchester United), Upson (West Ham), A Cole (Chelsea); Gerrard (Liverpool), Barry (Aston Villa), Lampard (Chelsea); Walcott (Arsenal), Heskey (Wigan), Rooney (Manchester United). Substitutions: Wright-Phillips (Chelsea) for Barry 46; Beckham (LA Galaxy) for Walcott (79): Defoe (Portsmouth) for Rooney (86).

Kazakhstan (4-4-2): Mokin (Alma-Ata); Kislitsyn (Shakhtyor), Kuchma (Astana), Logvinenko (Aktobe), Kirov (Alma-Ata); Ibrayev (Tobyl), Skorykh (Tobyl), Baltiyev (Tobyl), Kukeyev (Alma-Ata); Ostapenko (Alma-Ata), Nusserbayev (Ordabasy). Substitutions: Maltsev (Irtysh) for Ostapenko (76); Sabalakov (Tobyl) for Kirov (85).

Referee: P Allaerts (Belgium)

Man of the match: Lampard.

Attendance: 89,107.

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