This afternoon, England's rising sons will surely set course for the rising sun. Victory over Greece at Old Trafford will ensure their presence in the World Cup in South Korea and Japan next summer, and, after England's 5-1 rout of Germany in Munich five weeks ago, anything other than a home win is difficult to imagine.

As Sven-Goran Eriksson said yesterday: "It should be one big step to something very beautiful." Not so long ago England were just stumbling in the dark.

A year ago Kevin Keegan sat on the touchline at Wembley not knowing what to do as Dietmar Hamann, having given Germany an early lead, proceeded to run the game. Anyone predicting then that England would qualify as group winners under a foreign coach and with David Beckham wearing the captain's armband would have been considered a suitable case for the funny farm.

Yet again the speed at which fortunes in football can change has been amply demonstrated. Keegan has gone, and so has the moribund muddle into which his England side had strayed.

Under Eriksson, England have found a new team, a new confidence and a new sense of destiny. All of which has been achieved, Swedish-fashion, with a minimum of fuss and emotion.

"I'm like anybody else," Eriksson insisted. "I'm frustrated, I'm glad, I'm happy, I'm angry. I just might not show it. That's the way I am."

So there will be no grand speech before England take the field today. "I do not prepare anything to say beforehand," Eriksson explained, "because until I see the players I will not know how each is feeling.

"But I will talk about patience - that is the key word. We must not attack with eight players and be exposed to counterattacks. We need be as patient as we were in Greece."

This afternoon an England team showing changes in goal and defence, where Nigel Martyn and Martin Keown will come in for the injured David Seaman and Sol Campbell, but only one radical alteration, with Robbie Fowler replacing the hamstrung Michael Owen in attack, will try to exploit the advantage won by the Munich triumph and the less spectacular though equally crucial victory over Albania four nights later.

If Eriksson is worried about anything it is the widespread assumption that victory is there for the taking. "Listening to people you would think we were already in the World Cup," he said, "but we're not, absolutely not.

"When you play Germany away you do not need to motivate a football team because everyone knows that it's difficult. This time it would be easy to think that you don't need to work very hard to win the game. That would be a big mistake. I think our players are very focused, very concentrated on this match. I shall be very surprised if we do not play a good game tomorrow." Automatic World Cup qualification is almost entirely in England's hands. A win at Old Trafford and the Germans will be able to send them back to second place and the play-offs only by scoring enough times against Finland in Gelsenkirchen to overturn the six-goal gap on goal difference.

"I expect Germany to win," said Eriksson. "That result against us, it will not happen again." Just as long as they do not win by too many, he might have added.

At Old Trafford there will be many Greek bodies barring the way, and without Owen's extra speed up front Eriksson's side will need to be more precise in their attempts to create space near goal.

In Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Paul Scholes and Nick Barmby they have the midfield influences to do this. Should Emile Heskey or Fowler, preferred to Andy Cole when the first-team bibs were handed out in practice yesterday, fail to find the net, then Scholes is the player to do that as well.

To be on the brink of winning a qualifying group containing Germany, having reached France '98 by forcing Italy into the play-offs, is again no small feat for a team whose record in major tournaments since the 1966 World Cup is risible. That this has been achieved in the space of five games and from such a low starting point makes objections to a foreign coach even more tritely jingoistic.

Credit where it is due, however. A residue of the indefatigable spirit that enabled Glenn Hoddle to qualify for the last World Cup by holding Italy 0-0 in Rome is still there. Nor should it be forgotten that the choice of Beckham as captain, bizarre at the time but making better sense now, was Peter Taylor's. Even Keegan did his bit in bucking things up.

None of this should be overlooked amid the celebrations if, or more likely when, England qualify for the 2002 World Cup today. The Football Association still regards the 2006 tournament in Germany as one England are more likely to be in a position to win, but at least, under Eriksson, there has been no more nonsense about 2002 being a good one to miss.

Developing talents need the experience of playing in World Cups and European championships proper, and from this viewpoint even the black comedy of Euro 2000 was not an entirely wasted exercise. That said, for a number of England players, Eriksson must come across as the Teletext after the Teletubbies.

England players will wear their names on the back of their shirts today for the first time outside championship finals.