Peter Corrigan: Strange style of Sven the remote controller

How many walks up the garden path can a nation take? Once more the English have followed their team to the gates of success only for the journey to prove fruitless and, worse still, for the adventure to end in confusing anti-climax.

Even England's penalty shoot-out exits from the World Cup finals of 1998 and 1990 suddenly seem a more bearable memory compared with the hypnotically slow collapse of countrywide morale suffered on Friday morning.

At least with a shoot-out it's a quick and a dramatic end: death comes in a flash over the bar. The immediate reaction is of acute pain but then follows swiftly the indignation of the injustice of it all and sympathy for the transgressors. And there's nothing like indignation and sympathy to ease the anguish and induce the strangely comforting feeling of being wronged.

Compare Ireland's exit a round earlier. They didn't advance as far as England but they did so in consistently better style and, when the agony of their missed penalties against Spain subsided, earned sympathy blended with admiration for their proud and gallant effort. England's passage through the exit door was accompanied by no stirring blasts on the bugle. Their challenge petered out so tamely and guilelessly you could almost hear the balloon deflating and the hiss of escaping belief resounding throughout the land.

Brazil's winning goal would, in normal circumstances, have sent them home with an entitlement to bemoan their misfortune. David Seaman volunteered himself as scapegoat for not preventing Ronaldinho's 42-yard free-kick from curving with cruel precision over his head.

Inasmuch as a goalkeeper should be alert to all possibilities he has to admit culpability but, whether it was intended or not, he was the victim of a freakish shot he probably wouldn't encounter again if he played until he was 50. However, not even a calamity of that magnitude could divert attention from the way England played against 10 Brazilians for the last 35 minutes. They were so shapeless and uncoordinated you would have thought they hadn't spent the previous five minutes together let alone five weeks.

Obviously they have a lot yet to acquire in terms of maturity and the organisational instinct to adapt to the changing demands of a major contest, but we can be forgiven for thinking they were further along that road than they appear to be.

Some of us should also be forgiven for not yet comprehending Sven Goran Eriksson's style of management. Speaking for myself, I just can't get my head around imperturbability as a management tool. Just as he did following the poor performance in the opening match against Sweden, Eriksson gave a perfect explanation of his team's faults and shortcomings in those 35 minutes when they attempted so aimlessly to prevent the game from slipping away.

But it was as if he was talking about a team over which he had no control. It is impossible from a television picture to gauge how much communication was taking place between England's bench and their floundering team. Brazil's manager, "Big Phil" Scolari, prowled his section of the touchline like a caged tiger, continually yelling instructions. Most managers are the same, and much of their attempt to influence the proceedings is probably futile (although you wouldn't say that about South Korea's Guus Hiddink, a puppet-master if ever I saw one).

Eriksson sat impassively through the demise of his team's chances, coolly sipping water. I fancied that when he finished drinking he'd send them a message in the bottle, but I saw no advice forthcoming. Perhaps the players who were sent on as substitutes carried instructions, but they seemed to have difficulty getting themselves into whatever pattern of play was being pursued. Replacing Michael Owen seemed particularly odd. Even if he wasn't functioning at 100 per cent he was still the man most likely to pounce on a half-chance.

England have made solid progress since Eriksson took charge and, overall, they are due much credit for reaching the quarter-finals when most of us felt they would not emerge from the Group of Death. Their performance against Argentina was excellent and carried plenty of encouragement. They were less than inspirational against Nigeria, but their 3-0 victory over Denmark was emphatic enough to justify the fullest confidence.

In getting so far the team created a high level of anticipation in their own minds and in the hopes of their followers. David Beckham admitted that he thought they were going to go all the way, and that was a feeling shared by almost all his countrymen. England's followers have been criticised in the past for allowing their expectations to be bellowed up to ridiculous proportions but, for once, the soaring optimism seemed well-founded.

That this is a young team, with more accomplished youngsters ready to add to the strength and vigour of the squad, is a consoling factor, but it has to be doubted if they'll ever get a better chance in a major championship. If they do, the nation will be expecting them to make more of it.

Blatter's flaw show on refs

Sepp Blatter's criticism of some of the refereeing in the World Cup might have been a touch more acceptable were he not president of Fifa, the organisation who appointed the refs in the first place. Blatter said he would demand changes in the way referees were selected in future, with the emphasis on ability rather than nationality. Does he believe that this qualifies as an inspirational idea? Appointing match officials from as many countries as possible was such a flawed policy it is amazing the president didn't jump on it earlier. Nations like the Maldives, for instance, are not renowned for a standard of big-time football that would produce assistant referees with eagle-eyed efficiency on offside decisions.

Suspicious minds might conclude that acknowledging small countries in this manner would not have dissuaded them from voting for Blatter when he sought re-election just before the World Cup began. Now that his control is reinforced he can address the problem realistically, but he came out with a very odd comment. Recognising that the linesmen have been a "disaster", especially when it comes to offside, Blatter said: "They haven't even realised that it is better to award an offside goal than to disallow a good goal." Italy, therefore, would be more furious at having a good goal disallowed than they would if their opponents were awarded an offside goal.

It is an extraordinary conclusion. Still, we mustn't quibble if he is serious about reforming the quality of match officiation. He could create a vast improvement overnight if he acted on my suggestion last week that they take advantage of the giant screens at stadiums to adjudicate on dodgy decisions. At the moment, billions of television viewers around the world know within seconds whether or not a decision is wrong, while those inside the stadium remain at the mercy of the frailties of the naked eye.

Offside decisions are the main culprits, but a replay would have surely given the luckless USA team a penalty for handball against the Germans on Friday.

While there's no doubt that the Italians have suffered more than any team from faulty flagging, I felt that their shock defeat by South Korea on Tuesday was due more to their own negativity than any inefficiency by the Ecuadorean referee, Byron Moreno. He refereed well and bravely, and while the sending-off of Francesco Totti for diving in the box was a little harsh it was forgivable.

The Italian press called him a thief and said it was all part of a Fifa plot to assist the co-hosts. Conspiracy theories have abounded in the tournament. It was felt that the appointment of Felipe Ramos Rio of Mexico to referee the quarter-final between England and Brazil was suspect, because Mexico owe Brazil more than a few favours. Who can say? The undeserved sending-off of Ronaldinho may have been just to throw us off the scent.