James Lawton: England poorly served by Eriksson's policy of multiple caps

Sven Goran Eriksson's latest patchwork quilt of an England team provides a splash of new colour in the young-bull shape of Wayne Rooney at Upton Park tonight. But what kind of warmth will it provide for the idea that, behind the endless shuttling of much less compelling talent between the chorus line and centre stage, there is a semblance of a grand design?

Most previous England managers prosecuted the country against club war on the understanding that hard-won time with their players would be put to constructive use. In the East End tonight, however, we get another brief running of the "Eriksson Follies".

One temptation is to believe that the Swede, appalled by the combination of myopia and self-interest displayed by the big clubs, is quite perversely turning the whole business of friendly matches into an elaborate joke.

If it is so, George Cohen is not smiling. The World Cup-winning full-back, who was an integral part of Sir Alf Ramsey's relentless planning for the 1966 tournament, continues to be aghast at the absence of systematic team-building.

"I think the approach is abysmal," Cohen says. "For a start I hate this awarding of cheap caps for cameo sketches in bits of meaningless matches. Not so long ago an international cap was the reward for outstanding talent or an impressive body of work in club football, and generally both. Now the whole process of selection has been devalued. Caps are being passed around as though they come from a bag of sweets.

"International footballers should play international matches... not a series of walk-on parts, which are utterly pointless. You have to bear in mind that great midfield players like Johnny Haynes and Bobby Charlton could produce superb, dominating performances while being on the ball for no more than two of the 90 minutes.

"A full-back can do his job perfectly well, running, covering, applying pressure on an attacker without a touch of the ball for 15 minutes. When you look at the situation in this context, the current selection policy is made to look totally absurd."

Cohen's point about the irrelevance of so much of the international experience of a rapidly expanding number of capped marginal players is persuasively underlined by the fate of Chelsea's impressively maturing midfielder Frank Lampard, who returns to his old hunting ground for his eighth cap. Lampard has been an important factor in Chelsea's consolidation of a place near the top of the Premiership. Hungry for the ball and increasingly able to make constructive use of it, Lampard should now be able to point to eight games as a sound basis for any call to the colours in more serious action. But the fact is that he has yet to play in a competitive international ­ and, even more significantly, not one of his seven appearances in friendly matches have stretched for more than 45 minutes.

"Sometimes," says Cohen, "it is hard to make a proper judgement on a 90-minute effort. What can you do with 45 minutes except shoot in the dark? I have to agree with Sir Alex Ferguson when he says this is a silly game against Australia. Of course, I have to believe in the value of friendly matches. How else can you build true understanding between team-mates without having them play together regularly? What we are coming down to, when you think about it, is the question: does international football matter any more? Brazil play full-strength teams against quite soft opposition ­ just to get the feeling of scoring lots of goals. Great performances don't happen. A lot of building goes into them."

Cohen sees a case for reinstating the old Home Internationals. "I don't really know why they were abandoned," he says. "I suppose it was mostly English arrogance, but the result was we lost three fixtures a season which had the certainty of commitment. The opposition had reached a low ebb, but the Welsh would certainly give England a serious game now and we could be pretty sure the Scots would get themselves up for the England game. Look at what happened when we played them in Euro 1996 and qualification for Euro 2000. The other lost benefit was that the Scots would probably have been willing to knock down Wembley for us for free."

Meanwhile, Sven Goran Eriksson's cabaret season rolls on.