World Cup 2018: How England were set up to fail in Brazil four years ago - even before they arrived

Exclusive: Tony Strudwick was part of Roy Hodgson's backroom team four years ago and believes simple logistical decisions paved the way for the Three Lions' group stage exit

England had not even lost to Costa Rica in their final group game before the inquest into their dismal World Cup failure in Brazil got underway four years ago.

But a man on the inside back in 2014 witnessed first-hand how simple logistical decisions paved the way to England's demise long before the likes of Mario Balotelli and Luis Suarez sunk their teeth in on the pitch.

Tony Strudwick is currently preparing to start work as part of Ryan Giggs' backroom staff with the Welsh national team so he will not be privy to the white-hot pressure of the England World Cup bid this time around.

On a sunny day at Fulham's training ground in the west London suburb of Motspur Park, where he is helping to launch Catapult Sport's new PLAYR device, Strudwick could not seem further removed from the eye of the storm which begins in Russia this week.

But as a man who has spent the last two decades analysing how to get the best out of footballers, he could not quite believe some of the basic errors made by England in Rio de Janeiro, where he was part of Roy Hodgson's coaching staff.

Now he is hoping that the Three Lions learned from some 'crazy' mistakes in time for their arrival at their Repino base.

“For instance, it was a big faux-pas in Brazil that the drive from the training ground to the hotel was over an hour each way every day,” Strudwick told The Independent. “That was just crazy – that's two hours on a bus straight away.

“It was just an oversight and it's the kind of thing that England must get right this time or it won't work. It's why Germany build their own training base, hotel and centre. It makes sense. You then get control over these things which may not seem like big issues but they make all the difference.”

England's hotel in Rio, the Royal Tulip, was in the district of Sao Conrado and local traffic turned the 10-mile trip across the city to their training base at the Urca naval base into a daily slog.

Strudwick worked with Hodgson and the Three Lions in 2014 (PA)

This time, Gareth Southgate has elected to set up shop in the small town of Repino, which is around 20 miles north of St Petersburg. Crucially, the ForRestMix hotel is just a two-minute drive to the media centre and only 10 minutes on the coach to their Spartak Zelenogorsk training base, which is one short coastal road away from the pine forests that surround their country club base.

However, although the camp ticks boxes on one hand, it has been suggested that the isolated nature of Repino, which sits on the Gulf of Finland, could become an issue when it comes to player boredom.

There are echoes of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, when Fabio Capello's England squad was based at a purpose-built facility in Rustenburg. Jermain Defoe has since revealed that he got so bored one night that he watched Wayne Rooney's entire wedding DVD.

England tumbled out in the group stage four years ago (AFP)

“Boredom is always an issue,” adds Strudwick. “No matter how much you put into the players you have to give them free time, down time. You're holistically managing the total load and that's the real challenge, particularly if you anticipate going deep into the competition.

“That means change of scenery and how you manage down time. It is a crucial element that England must get right or things can unravel. You have a really diverse group because you're bringing together people who train differently in their club environment. As a head coach you want to maximise your time to get the maximum response from them.

"It's a very big challenge. I think it's an art and a science so you need to use as much science as you can to drive decisions.”

World Cup 2010 was also infamous for the controversial 'Capello Index', where the Italian manager rated each player's contribution out of 100. Defoe, incidentally, got the highest average score across the three group games with 62.47.

Alongside his new role with Wales, Strudwick is currently a SmartCoach for PLAYR, a new device which tracks individual player performance via GPS, so the 44-year-old is well-placed to assess whether such analysis is worthwhile.

He said: “Technology and data has changed the whole landscape of football at the elite end. But the real competitive advantage comes with what you do with it and how you make your decisions instead of just relying on numbers, data and stats. It's about how you marry the information with decisions making. That's the critical bit and that's the art in it.

“At international level, with only a short space of time to prepare, it's a challenge. First thing's first – for an international team to do well at a tournament they have to turn up with physical momentum.

“If a player, even your best player, breaks down in the few weeks leading up to a tournament it's very difficult to get that physical momentum back in and that's crucial.

“It's about the continuation of momentum from the season and that's a real challenge.”