Friendly internationals are football wars continued by diplomatic means. This needs to be remembered in assessing the true merits of England's performance in losing 1-0 to Italy in Turin. That said, the game in the Stadio delle Alpi confirmed the wisdom of Peter Taylor in choosing a squad designed to give youth its fling. The team he fielded had a better shape and balance than the sides picked by Kevin Keegan either in Euro 2000 or the fateful World Cup qualifier against Germany, when a 1-0 defeat prompted his resignation.
Sven-Goran Eriksson, who is due to take charge of England next July but who may be involved part-time for the World Cup games against Finland and Albania in March, will not have been given any revealing insight into English football by Wednesday's game. At the same time, he will be content with evidence that England are not so bad as they have been painted.
This is often the way of it. An England flop in a major tournament is followed by a better display in their next friendly, witness the 1-1 draw with France, the world and European champions, in Paris this season. This was followed by a desperately bad performance against the Germans at Wembley and now further evidence that, given a sensible format, England can still pass the ball properly and move off it with some idea of where they should be going.
Nevertheless, a true judgment on the virtues of Taylor's caretakership should be delayed until after England resume against Spain at Villa Park in another friendly at the end of February. The qualifier against Finland will then be a month away and, assuming Taylor is still in charge, he will doubtless put out a side with that in mind.
Though the team performed well enough on Wednesday to suggest they would achieve rather more against the Finns at Anfield than some of the seniors did under Howard Wilkinson a month ago in the scoreless draw in Helsinki, it is hard to imagine Martin Keown not being recalled to the defence or Graeme le Saux not resuming at left wing-back, the role that found Gareth Barry, playing out of position, so ill at ease against Italy.
Places will be found for Paul Scholes, obviously, and Steven Gerrard, probably, allowing Kieron Dyer to switch to right wing-back, if required. Emile Heskey, a less gauche footballer now he has joined Liverpool, was one of England's successes on Wednesday and would presumably be partnered by Michael Owen at Anfield, although Nick Barmby provided a tidy reminder off his value.
Taylor was pleased with the authority of Beckham, the new captain, in central midfield, but added that he did not want to lose the quality of the Manchester United player's crosses. This is surely the point.
Heskey would have given Italy's world-class defenders even more problems had he been rising among them to meet Beckham's centres. Beckham spraying elegant long passes from midfield is a pretty sight but less of a threat to a defence of this quality.
The ease with which Rio Ferdinand played as a sweeper in Taylor's back three was one of the more encouraging aspects of Wednesday's match, although with Beckham dropping deep the West Ham man was less inclined to bring the ball out from the back to set up movements.
"Rio is a good passer but David is even better," said Taylor. "I love defenders who can pass and Rio showed he could do that as well as defend. All I said to him before the game was `get something out of it', be a good defender or play some tremendous passes. He did both."
In the longer term, whether England adhere to Taylor's 3-5-2 system will depend on Eriksson, who tends to favour 4-4-2 but may be swayed by the present shortage of English full backs of genuine international quality. But at least the Swedish technocrat now knows that he has something to build on.
