Hollow claims add to unease

Some slight bad luck for those Englishmen abroad in Toulouse last night. A game on which they had marginal claims slipped away from them for the want of just a sliver of genius. Romania now occupy the prime real estate at the top of Group H.

Barring divine intervention, the best which can happen to England now is that they wind up playing Argentina in St Etienne, a prospect which should make the realists among them quake. England fans grasped that as they wandered out of the Municipal Stadium. As they might have put it themselves, they weren't singing any more.

With reason. England are a hard, grafting side but as uniformly functional as sheets of brown paper. Not the sort who win World Cups but the sort who are easily undone by cunning.

The source of the failure will be a rankling irony for Hoddle for years to come. His team lacks the garish panache which was his own meal-ticket.

The English media will be hard on Hoddle when the time comes, yet he could argue that with the plain resources at his disposal he has done well.

His critics got their way last night when David Beckham passed from martyrdom to midfielder after 33 minutes. He replaced Ince and in doing so neatly underlined the paucity of England's midfield options.

The Beckham business has been a media red herring and Alex Ferguson would have only have contributed something to the overall debate if he had noted that Hoddle has been wrong to start Teddy Sheringham.

Hoddle is right about Beck ham's defensive limitations and Anderton's coltish abilities have just about survived the scrutiny of a critical press corps whoshow the analytical objectivity of Posh Spice.

He was right also about Gascoigne the bloated vaudevillian. Scholes is more honest and less distracting, but his presence as the best option left tells something about England's critical incapacity for surprise.

Last night England were blessed to have the insouciance of Owen to call upon. For calories expended it would have been a fair result, but in terms of inspiration and tempo, the Romanians had exposed England's podgy under belly.

Hoddle's problems lie in the musty Englishness of his side. He has nobody to do the things which he once did. He has a defence of Yorkshire-pudding Englishness peppered up into a continental omelette. When the Romanians strung it together the inadequacies advertised themselves like teasers for the big clearout sale to come.

Hoddle suggested afterwards that, apart from the two "sloppy" goals, Romania had "created no chances. David Seaman didn't have a save to make all night." Maybe on the England bench it looked that way.

From the stands, even holding the two Romanian goals up to the light reveals more than mere sloppy defending. Goal one and Hagi hooked over Sol Campbell while Adams, the flat-footed policeman of the defence, retreated worriedly only to be close at hand when Moldovan slammed the ball into the net. That's Moldovan who hasn't started a game for Coventry since he arrived.

Goal two and Le Saux was left to chase as Petrescu always had a yard in which to savour the prospect of nutmegging Seaman.

Leave it at that. Ignore the three good chances Ilie created for himself. Three at the back won't serve England over the next 10 days.

Batistuta, Ortega, et al will have watched last night and seen a Romanian side two years past its best doing just enough. They will have enjoyed a good night's sleep. As for Hoddle, well, uneasy rest the head which wears the crown.

His team's defeat meant that a good night's sleep was not granted to the citizens of Toulouse. Little of consequence happened but that sense of expectation told lots about the other problem of English football and this World Cup.

Yesterday, as a French policeman lay in a deep coma in Paris following a good kicking from some German fans, the German football federation made a shape at doing the decent thing and offered to withdraw their team. England should have their own letter of resignation ready also.

Football will finally be walking on two feet instead of four when a football federation doesn't just make that offer, but does the deed.

Subtract all the money and the television, and football is still just a game. Groups of England soccer fans caused trouble in central Toulouse after their team lost 2-1 to Romania in the World Cup on Monday night, but the disturbance was short-lived.

Eyewitnesses said at least one England fan was arrested as a group of about 2,000 fans chanted and burst into the city's main square. Bystanders fled as fans shouted insults, they added. Several French people were also arrested.

Central Toulouse resounded to English football chants but riot police did not intervene, keeping at a distance.

There were no clashes, however, and some of the England supporters began to drift away, especially as all central Toulouse bars were closed.

Toulouse railway station, where thousands of England fans were boarding trains to return home, was calm, however.