SIDELINE CUT:England booked their ticket to South Africa, but the Republic of Ireland face a few months of high drama and shattered nerves lie ahead, writes KEITH DUGGAN

COULD ENGLAND win the 2010 World Cup? That question must have flitted across many minds as their national team stormed into next summer’s finals in South Africa on Wednesday night. Almost inevitably, English hopes fly high and abundant. The ease with which they swept Croatia aside bodes well for the big dreams of Little Englanders. Fabio Capello, the lantern jawed coach, has replaced the MTV Cribs culture of the English football camp with something reminiscent of the austere lifestyle suffered by Bob Cherry and the fictive heroes of Billy Bunter’s remove.

And the millionaire club have responded well to life at Greyfriars. In Wembley on Wednesday night, they looked unstoppable. The messages sent to Fleet street from the boys with the typewriters could not have been more flattering. Capello had unlocked the secret of how to get Steven Gerrard to perform for England with the same marauding aggression he displays for his native Liverpool week in and week out.

Wayne Rooney is revelling under Capello’s orthodox reign. In Aaron Lennon (and Theo Walcott to return), England has young players who could shine in South Africa. So smooth was England’s passage that Capello had the luxury of sending the veteran David Beckham in for an extension of his mixed legacy in an England shirt, a reign of unrealised ambition and occasional rhapsodic moments.

In a relatively short time, the Italian seems to have harnessed the disparate domestic talents of the Premier League and turned the national team into an organised and a cohesive force. And the English are purring.

The speed and ease of England’s negotiation of their qualifying group could not be more different to Ireland’s long, nerve-wracking and slow-burning campaign. The honesty and the application of the present generation of Irish players cannot be faulted.

And although the aesthetics of their play have not exactly been dazzling, Ireland are producing the results that are keeping their World Cup hopes alive. But there was something vaguely haunting about watching the laboured and, for long periods, fruitless machinations of the Irish against the thorny Cypriots.

The half-empty stadium, the gloomy lighting, the sense that here was a match so far removed from the ultimate point of the competition – of winning the World Cup – all contributed to a despairing sense that the Irish team, for all its bravery, is merely a light waiting to be extinguished by some random gust of wind. Robbie Keane’s sharp goal meant that accepting the crushing limitation of a 1-1 draw was avoided.

The big picture remained in focus: Ireland were young and plucky and snapping at the heels of Italy, the world champions. It is true that the Italians position as group leaders would appear to be unassailable. But their visit to Croke Park promises to be one of those transcendent occasions in Irish football, when European skill and entitlement becomes snared in the uniquely Irish virtues of heart and raging conviction. At least that is the story. A victory against Italy would be a source of marvellous joy even if it proved to have no meaningful impact on the overall placing in the qualifying group.

The Italians are aristocrats at this game, they are past masters in negotiating their way through qualifying campaigns and as they illustrated in Germany just over three years ago, they possess an internal hauteur and big tournament nerve that has eluded so many countries, England included, down the decades. Italy and Ireland will meet in Croke Park and then part ways. If the Irish are to make it to South Africa, then a few months of high drama and shattered nerves lie ahead.

Like Capello, the implacable Giovanni Trapattoni has been uncompromising in his vision of what the Irish team should be. He has demonstrated a kind of grand indifference to the opinions generated by the Knights of Montrose. The last three previous managers were, to one extent or another, hunted and persecuted figures towards the end of their respective reigns. Trapattoni has rarely looked anything other than serene.

The photograph taken of him watching Italy putting Bulgaria to the sword in Turin during the week captured him looking as composed as ever. It is as though he has been granted some higher assurance that after everything, Ireland will be there. Perhaps his age and his glittering achievements have gifted him with an unshakeable conviction that things will work out. Perhaps he is just blessed with a happy temperament. Or perhaps he believes that he is doing as anyone reasonably could with a young national squad ranked in the lower slopes of the international system.

There will be precious few soft touches when it comes to the play-offs in November. Ireland might well be perceived as being among the more vulnerable states when it comes to the cut-and-thrust of a two-match do-or-die campaign.

As ever with Ireland, a ticket to South Africa will depend on some vital, unexpected moment of heroism against opposition yet to be decided. The agonising element of Ireland’s performance in this campaign is that although they have managed to run in the shadow of Italy, they are as far away from the bigger dream as ever.

Regardless of what happens, it remains a shame that Stephen Ireland does not see fit to play for his country. The athleticism and technical deftness that he brings to any team could ultimately be the difference between the national team making it to South Africa or staying at home, yet again.

And South Africa promises to be an arresting World Cup. Green Point Stadium, which will provide the visual motif for the tournament, is all but completed, sitting in the shadow of Table Mountain. It will be spectacular in sunlight and illuminated in nightfall. The 1995 rugby World Cup, which became a powerful symbol for new unity in South Africa, seems terribly distant now.

The sight of Nelson Mandela standing with Francois Pienaar, moving as it was, could not magic all the troubles away. Fifteen years later, the sprawling country remains beset by new violence and the lingering consequences of apartheid.

The World Cup represents an opportunity for the political and business interests in South Africa to showcase the better nature of their troubled paradise. And at its best, the World Cup can have a hypnotic effect on the host nation.

Those three weeks are broken into what happens during those 90-minute segments when the best footballers in the world take the stage. For the duration of the tournament, ordinary troubles and humdrum violence can be suspended by the spell of the beautiful game. And it promises to be an open World Cup. Spain will come buoyed with their status as champions of Europe. Brazil remain the star attraction. And once more, England believes.

Ireland’s aspirations of joining the big party remain resolutely alive but the odds are daunting. It is stunning to think now that there was a period in the last decade when the Irish national team compared favourably to the English, when the Irish national team entered a World Cup finals for which a vociferous and learned minority of opinion believed that they had the right to be considered medal contenders. It is quickly forgotten that through that World Cup in 1994, England were our cheerleaders in chief.

Those days are done. The English beast may be stirring at last. They’re hearing only good news on radio Africa. Irish hopes are tuned to a different wavelength. A few long and queasy months lie ahead for the boys in green. Here’s hoping that Mr Trapattoni, the blueblood Italian football man, has the luck of the Irish.