James Lawton: Good luck and good play give England the look of winners

Denmark had a nice little World Cup and naturally they wanted to make the most of it after England had come out of the mist and drizzle of Niigata and brutally applied their version of a samurai broadsword.

But you could linger only for so long on the regrets and the euphemisms of the Danish coaching team of Morten Olsen and Michael Laudrup. Yes, Denmark had a huge edge in possession of the ball. Yes, there were times when Dennis Rommedahl and Jon Dahl Tomasson, the men who wrecked the exiled world champions of France, threatened to apply similar mayhem to England. But they did not and as the chastened Vikings took the airliner replacement for the old longboat home there was one immutable truth.

Denmark had a nice little World Cup. England might just be having a huge one.

For what, you have to ask in the wake of their 3-0 dismantling of the Danish dream, is there to stop them? Brazil in Friday's quarter-final? Maybe, if the fires being lit by Ronaldo and Rivaldo are not irretrievably doused by the men behind them who so badly impersonate world-class defenders against the dogged Belgians in Kobe today? A re-charged Italy or a Spain, magnificently sharpened by Raul, finally fulfilling their potential on the big stage in Yokohama at the climax of the great tournament? A little more likely, perhaps. But still you have return to certain fundamental aspects of winning of a World Cup.

Quite often it is won by a team touched by something more than a tight little run of good form over seven games. In England's case a crucial element is being supplied generously by their coach Sven Goran Eriksson.

On Saturday night, when some football men might have been caught in the euphoria of an unexpectedly comfortable triumph, Eriksson was back in his post-Munich mode. "It was good that we did what we had to do, we made it a comfortable win – but there is a lot more work to do," he said. "We must be glad we are in this position, but we must accept that we can only build on it with a lot more hard work."

Sounds simple, if not bland, but this is the Eriksson the Football Association knew they were embracing when it decided that, outside of Terry Venables, no English candidate had a sufficiently impressive set of credentials. Whatever happens now, it knows how it felt for the man who did all the damage to the bank of Monte Carlo.

Eriksson dealt briskly with the forlorn trumpetings of Olsen and Laudrup over the battle for possession. Who, he wondered, really cared? Football, at this level or any other, is not about good impressions. It is about the really serious business of winning.

England did it with impressive composure after accepting the bounty of Tommy Sorensen's calamity for the first goal and the goalkeeper's later failure to properly address an opportunistic strike by Emile Heskey. In between, Michael Owen posted the general alert to all potential opponents: he has the taste of defenders' blood again after his marvellously swivelling killer goal. It only remained for Rio Ferdinand to rack up his reputation as a world-class defender another notch and for his colleagues to take their cues.

The message was blessedly uncomplicated. It said that Denmark could have the ball – and the onus of doing something with it – and the more the game progressed the more secure England looked in their advantage. Stig Tofting and Thomas Gravesen were, in the end, simply embarrassed by the extent of their possession, which in Tofting's case, particularly, amounted to an open invitation to perform the obvious and mundane when the aching need was for a touch of genuine creativity. Tofting has the bearing of a pitt bull rather than a Great Dane, and it was far from what was required.

It meant that England, whatever technical limitations might be exposed in comparison with the Brazilian forwards and Italian defenders, were left with the fastest-rising aura in the World Cup. Conquerors of Argentina, comfortable survivors of the Group of Death, almost formal winners over the team that brought down Zinedine Zidane and the rest of the French football aristocracy, England also had the re-assurance of David Beckham's slow, but now traceable return to something closer to genuine match fitness.

Throw in Ferdinand's touch, but with the provision that so far he has not been exposed to the area of the game he least likes, the close presence of quick, adroit attackers who give much less scope for his often-inspired reading of the game, David Seaman's passable impression of the old Gordon Banks and the reminder that when the service is right Owen is just about unplayable, and you see why Eriksson might just be feeling that he is dealing from a deep deck indeed.

In his latest hand in Niigata he played his cards in the manner of a master of the art of the possible. Denmark had given him and England more than he could have dreamed of with that early goal, and so why push your luck when the dealer is being so kind? The truth is that Eriksson is now proofed against a bad end in football's biggest casino. Defeat in the quarter-finals of the World Cup, possibly at the hands of Brazil, eighteen months after taking charge of an apparently doomed qualifying campaign is something to hold indeed as you stand three games away from the game's supreme achievement.

So much depends on his ability to continue to play to his strengths – and to avoid any recurrence of the blind-alley loitering that made the opening game with Sweden such a torment of the football spirit. Then, England seemed to be without purpose. In the subsequent three games, the change has been dramatic, though not so much in the quality of the play – that was at its best in the defeat of Argentina – but in the certainty of purpose.

Everything that could have happened beneficially for England against Denmark did so. Sorensen was terrified by anything floating in the air. Eriksson's reaction was practicality itself. "We'll take and we'll hold what we have," he declared at half-time. "It is more than enough."

Such conservative thinking should serve him well on Friday if the Brazilians do firebomb the Belgians into defeat. If Costa Rica could exploit Brazilian defensive weakness, it does not seem too much to ask Owen and Beckham to do the same.

Ronaldo, though, looking again something like the young striker who four years ago had come to dominate the game, will be intent on blasting away the incentive for sneak attacks, and if England do survive this threat of being marginalised by the football equivalent of nuclear attack, they will know that down the road such as Raul and Christian Vieri may well come leaping out of the Japanese landscape.

Such cautions will surely continue to shape the thinking of Eriksson, but then even the Iceman will do well do disguise the quickening of his pulse. Certainly the growing suggestion that he is a lucky manager is the least of his problems. In football, as in life, the winners ride their luck. As the pace accelerates here in the game's greatest race, the remarkable sense is that Sven Goran Eriksson may still be on the bridle.

Can England win the World Cup? Do not doubt the possibility.