England running out of time and talent

Fowler's late equaliser provides relief but stylish Cameroonians highlight Eriksson's paucity of World Cup resources

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Rescue act by Fowler fails to mask inadequacies

On an afternoon of brilliant sunlight and frustrated Japanese adoration for the stricken Occidental deity David Beckham ­ he produced a forlorn little cabaret of flicks and headers and juggling tricks before kick-off ­ there were moments during yesterday's final warm-up game here between England and Cameroon when it seemed that the best of the World Cup had come five days ahead of schedule. There was a glow of skill. Some of the movement was breath-taking. Raking cross-field passes were commonplace. It was poise on the hoof.

Pity about England, though. Robbie Fowler's injury-time header may have salvaged a 2-2 draw, but it did little to boost the England camp.

Pity their plight of deep doubt about Beckham's ability to have any significant impact on the great tournament after seven weeks away from match conditions, their loss of the genuinely game-breaking Steven Gerrard and the fact that, as Kieron Dyer talks up his chances of being fit for Sunday's game with Sweden, he has become the walking symbol of a team obliged to live in increasingly desperate hope rather than well-founded confidence.

Unfortunately for Sven Goran Eriksson, Cameroon, the reigning Olympic and African champions and for 10 years leading torch-bearers of Third World football, produced another cause for sympathy. They showed, bewitchingly at times, that when you deny England their headline talents, when you take away the Beckhams and Gerrards ­ and remove Michael Owen's chief suppliers ­ you are left, in terms of real accomplishment at this level, with, well, not very much at all.

Of course there is the resilience of spirit which produced Fowler's equaliser in the second minute of stoppage time. There is the enduring potential of Paul Scholes. There is the increasingly valuable, Bayern Munich-polished versatility of Owen Hargreaves.

There is always character, always combative character, but the sweep of African football ­ most brilliantly expressed by the Bologna left-sided midfielder Pierre Womé ­ was simply too much for England before the match took the now familiar slide into wholesale second-half substitutions.

After an hour Cameroon led 2-1 through goals by Samuel Eto'o and Géremi, Scholes having fed Darren Vassell for a sharply taken riposte, and their supremacy had been finely etched. Eriksson's face said that to think of the glory of victory in Munich nine months ago was an almost unbearably poignant recall of lost riches, and his pleasure at Fowler's headed equaliser had to be weighed against the seepage of confidence that seems now to have started almost from the moment the Sunday morning bells of the Bavarian capital stopped ringing.

England have now won just one of their last seven matches, a starkly unpromising record when set against that of yesterday's opponents, whose 2-1 defeat in Copenhagen earlier this month ­ when they were without eight first-choice players ­ was their first in 17 games. It is true yesterday was, as Eriksson pointed out so quickly, part of the phoney war, but then there was nothing counterfeit about the rhythm of Cameroon when they unfurled an attack, or the bite of men like Womé and Patrick Mboma and Eto'o. Eriksson half-conceded the point when he said, "It's never good to lose ­ even if you are playing your brother at tennis. But we are a few days away from the World Cup, who wants to go into the tackle, who wants to do 500 sprints?"

More damning was Eriksson's admission that while England did some good things, there was still a need to work at both defence and attack. Indeed there is, but with what time, and what resources?

Cameroon's German coach Winfried Schäfer followed the Eriksson principle of refusing to discuss the difficulties of a fellow coach and he had nothing to say about the denuding effect on England of the Beckham and Gerrard injuries. But, significantly, he said he was pleased with the "control" of his team in the first phase of the game and that, barring the kind of self-inflicted catastrophe that so regularly overtakes the Indomitable Lions, who knows, his well-organised and gifted team might just walk in the footprints of the legendary men of 1990.

That team of Roger Milla and François Oman Biyick beat the reigning world champions Argentina in the opening game at San Siro and ran Bobby Robson's England to the point of quarter-final victory in Naples, a triumph denied by only their own naïvety and the penalty box cunning of Gary Lineker.

Schäfer, wryly reminding his audience of his team's travel chaos ­ Cameroon had arrived here three days late after failure to acquire fly-over rights to some rather large countries ­ said, hopefully, he had a plane to catch and that he had to rush away but not before issuing a statement of confidence that now seems beyond the reach of Eriksson. "What I have seen for a while, including today, is that we have the capability of a good tournament. We have won tournaments, though we recognise we are now at the highest level. But we think we can do well, we have some belief."

There can be no more unquenchable belief in all of this World Cup. Four years after the brilliant, at times violent eruption in Italy, the Cameroon players threatened to strike in America in 1994 as they waited in vain for even the means to buy soft drinks, an expense that was eventually covered by their French coach. When the money, including bonus payments finally arrived, allegedly in a suitcase, the Lions were plainly past caring, subsiding to Russia and their five-goal striker Oleg Salenko.

Here in Japan, there are new African drumbeats ­ and some of them may be provided by Cameroon's fierce rivals Nigeria, England's final group opponents and winners at Ireland's Lansdowne Road fortress 10 days ago. It is a disquieting thought because whatever the competitive basis of yesterday's game, you cannot disguise the mood or the rhythm of a team. England's body language was not optimistic. Rio Ferdinand was caught out several times by the sheer poise of the Cameroon attack, at one point Wes Brown's desperate chore was watching perfectly flighted balls drop to the feet of the exuberant Womé and David James's collision with Martin Keown and loss of the ball could easily have been punished by more deliberate finishing.

All of this was watched mournfully by Japanese families dressed in the colours of England and mostly wearing the No 7 shirt of Beckham. They purred with pleasure when their hero went through his repertoire before the game, and when Cameroon insisted on keeping the ball for large slabs of time they cried plaintively: "We want Beckham."

Somehow Eriksson stayed aloof from the chanting, but it had to be something of an act of will. He is as urbane as ever. His natural charm and decorum, certainly on public occasions, remains impressive. But you can see that there has been a great tugging at his spirits. No, he insisted, he had not dreamed of sending home Beckham. He was still optimistic about the value of the superstar's presence beyond confirmation of his huge status in the Far East as a celebrity sportsman and phenomenal shirt salesman, and whatever its final strength his team can show determination and make a good tournament.

It was, you had to fear, the statement of a man gamely shuffling the cards, but at a rather low point in the pack.