James Lawton: Drum beat of hubris fails to stir Eriksson

England coach's pragmatic response to difficult World Cup draw may help his side dispel illusions that have undermined previous campaigns

Why, you have to wonder, was the World Cup draw received here with such widespread gloom? Jubilation would have been inappropriate, no doubt, but did we really have to cower behind the sofa?

You may just say that in view of the agonies of doubt and under-performance which marked England's final strides to automatic qualification, the last thing we needed to hear, apart from the mind-bending inanities BBC Five Live allowed Ian Wright to inflict on the nation, was that Argentina, the favourites, Sweden, a Viking scourge since 1968, and the potentially high-flying Super Eagles of Nigeria would provide the first – and maybe last – wave of opposition.

What everyone seemed to forget – with the notable and encouraging exception of Sven Goran Eriksson – was that the draw killed stone dead the infection which ever since 1966 has seen off the English challenge on football's great stages.

Hubris was skewered in Pusan and that had to be worth something. Something that could be exploited by an intelligent manager of men, somebody whose professional responses ran a little deeper than the last headline, the last result.

Apart from the soundbite mewlings of David Beckham about the opportunity the game with Argentina provided for redemption of his adolescent spat with Diego Simeone, no one except Eriksson had anything upbeat to say. Anything adult, that is, which means we can swiftly draw a veil over Wright's ranting on the virtues of "positivity." Not that our phlegmatic Swedish leader was doing handstands. No, he said that it was a tough draw but it did have the merit of putting everybody involved in the right competitive frame of mind. This is not as small a thing as might be imagined. England have so often gone into important battles with a belief in themselves utterly at odds with reality. Certainly it is not hard recalling a headline in the Daily Express before the 1988 European Championship in Germany. "Beat the drum for England," it said, "we're going to win."

Not only did England not win the tournament – the Dutch did that rather majestically – they didn't win a game. Two goals were scored, seven conceded, and when late in the final group game against the Netherlands, when Marco van Basten, having scored a hat-trick, was replaced at the same time that England sent on their substitute, Mark Hateley, one resigned critic theorised that maybe the Dutch felt that Van Basten did not belong on the same pitch as Hateley. By then England's drum had been well and truly punctured, Ray Houghton shooting the Irish to a 1-0 victory in the opening game. The Irish remember that victory well enough. It marked their first appearance in the finals of a major tournament.

Perhaps, though, the lesson has finally been learned under Eriksson. Even in the aftermath of that spectacular victory in Munich three months ago he denied himself the merest flash of triumphalism. He said that the games against Albania and Greece brought special difficulties for a team – and a nation – that had to quickly come down from the mountain top. His point could scarcely have come home more dramatically than when, at the end of a pitiful performance against Greece, Beckham was obliged to send in a free-kick in the fourth minute of stoppage time.

Eriksson had been reacting to the dismal pattern of England's passages between football heaven and hell. In 1998, in France, Glenn Hoddle claimed that no England team had been better prepared for a World Cup despite the fact that an emotionally tired Paul Gascoigne had just been sent home – having believed in his sober moments that he would be the creative mainspring of the team – and Alan Shearer could have been excused for mistaking Michael Owen for a ball-boy.

Before Euro 2000 Kevin Keegan, having scraped through a play-off with Scotland, was suddenly persuaded that England "could win it all". He then took an experimental team to Malta for a build-up game which could only have been made more fraught if the Luftwaffe had reappeared in the skies about the George Cross island.

Now Eriksson can be sure that his players will have their minds concentrated by the degree of the challenge facing them in Japan. He also offers some reassurance of his own. He says that his squad will be selected some time before the required deadline. Most of his players, no doubt, will have had plenty of time to prepare themselves. Eriksson says that England can beat any team on a good day and, with the memory of Owen still relatively fresh in Argentinian minds, it is a modest statement of reality.

If Eriksson needs any additional testimony, he could do worse than call up Nobby Stiles, one of the heroes of 1966. "So much of football is played out in the mind," says Stiles. "Sure, it's a tough draw but when you go to a tournament like the World Cup you go there to win, not to fiddle about. So you play some good teams early. If you're going to win the thing you have to face the best teams sooner or later. It's amazing how often you are told something so often you begin to believe it.

Before our opening game in 1966 everyone said we were going to roll over Uruguay. In fact, we had to fight for our lives for a goalless draw. It was the same before that qualifying game with Greece recently. We had beaten them handily in Athens, and so everyone thought it was a formality – except Eriksson. He has his feet on the ground and if some his lads didn't have theirs down before, they do now."

Such are the reflections of a man who has done the job required of a new England. They sound better than a lot of the squawkings that followed victory in Munich – not to mention the beating of a worn-out drum.