Give our players a break, pleads Eriksson

Coach says his young side can match anyone as he blames fatigue and Premiership pressures for the final slump

Sven Goran Eriksson arrived home last night with his England squad, deflated after their quarter-final defeat by Brazil, but still adamant that they were capable of defeating any other nation and were still potential world champions.

"We showed in this tournament that we don't need to be afraid of anyone," declared Eriksson, who selected Nicky Butt as his England man of the tournament. "We beat Argentina; on the way here we beat Germany. I don't know who is the best team in the world today. We'll see in a week. But I think we are equal with any team in the world today and that's very good for a young side."

For a man who conceals his emotions, the frustration of the England coach was manifest as the Swede added: "I thought we could go all the way, especially with all the shocks that there have been, but unfortunately in the second half against Brazil we just weren't good enough. It's that simple."

To establish his theory concerning England's ability to secure the trophy they have won only once, in 1966, Eriksson will have to wait until Germany and 2006 – although he can demonstrate that the trend is in the right direction with success in Portugal at the 2004 European Championships – and by then he will have hoped to persuade the Football Association of the necessity of a mid-season break for the Premiership.

The Swede attributed much of his team's second-half decline against the four-times world champions to fatigue after a long season without interruption. The question arose when he was asked whether he would have more time to work with his players in future. "There's no point pushing for that because there's no time," he said.

"There would only be a chance, as I have always suggested, if there were fewer teams in the Premier League, which will not be possible, I guess. But to have a winter break, that would be very important for the players. I don't know how far away we are from that, but it's something I will take up with the FA when I start work again."

He added pointedly: "We play a lot of football in England, and all the players we have in the squad, except Owen Hargreaves, play in the Premiership. The fittest player we had was Hargreaves, and that's easy to understand. He had a couple of months' break from playing in the Bundesliga during the winter. He played fewer games."

England's capitulation to Luis Felipe Scolari's team, Eriksson claimed, was largely the result of his key players, captain David Beckham and fellow Man-chester midfielder Paul Scholes, losing their impetus after the interval. "I think the moment when our captain, together with Scholes, was getting tired, we lost our shape and lost control of the ball," he said. "Obviously, that's very damaging. Those two, as passers, are among the best in the world. With France, for example, if you take away Zinedine Zidane, you'll see the difference. It's the same with David Beckham."

However, Eriksson was insistent that he had no alternative but to take a chance on Beckham's fitness, following the break in the midfielder's metatarsal bone in his left foot in the Champions' League game against Deportivo La Coruña. "I would not change that at all," he said. "I would gamble just the same, because you don't have a second David Beckham; you don't have a second Steven Gerrard; you don't have a player like Kieron Dyer, with his ability. No, no, no. When you go to a World Cup, you must take your best players if you want to have a good chance to win it."

He added: "Beckham can play better than he did in this tournament, but considering he'd been away for seven weeks, I think he did very well. When you have those problems you can't expect a player to be 100 per cent fit, as he was before Christmas. But I'm very happy with what David Beckham did."

Although it was evident that Beckham was far from his optimum in all but occasional moments, he was hardly convincing yesterday when asked if he had been fit enough to participate. "Who can say?" he replied. "I felt fit enough. That was enough for me, and enough for the manager. When you do come into a big competition like this, of course it's going to be hard, but I felt I was coming back to full fitness."

Eriksson also revealed his frustration at sitting on the bench at Shizuoka and being unable to influence events on the field. "You try to get out the message to keep the shape, move the ball instead of just knocking it out," he said. "But in the end it came down to the two goals that came at very delicate moments in the match. They were killer moments. It is very hard to respond. Mentally you are tired and it was hard to respond to the first one. Then you go out again and five minutes later, boomph. There's another one. So, we are physically and mentally tired. They tried, but not in the best way. But I don't think you can expect that from a young team like that. They will learn. I would not say we gave up. We fought and we tried but we were not strong enough to do it in a proper way."

The Swede was clearly annoyed at having progressed so near, yet so far. "In the first game we played against Sweden we had a poor second half. It was the same yesterday," he said. "We shall always regret that we did not do better. With our 11 against their 10, it was a big opportunity to go further."