Venables in balancing act

THIS season of exposure in English football is not finished yet, it seems. By way of postscript, we are enduring the sight of its national team, or more accurately the quality of England's players, being held up as inadequate in world terms. Actually, with the Brazilians in town, it should be enjoying rather than enduring.

Terry Venables has a reputation of being able to plot tactics and pick teams that secure one-off results: a "lucky" coach. It has been tested to the limit in the last week, with England's late winning goal against Japan and an even later pair to eke out an undeserved draw against Sweden.

Today, Brazil lie in wait at Wembley and, should Venables and his team somehow manage it again, he will become the John "Babbacombe" Lee of the game. Three times they tried to hang the convicted murderer nearly 100 years ago, three times the trapdoor stuck and under the law of the land he was reprieved.

The English problem lies in inflation. We have seen a pounds 4m full-back in Warren Barton, Newcastle United's new signing - to go with their pounds 6m, 28-year-old striker with a dodgy medical record, Les Ferdinand - struggling to play full-back for England. We have seen the English game's high opinion of itself shown up, not just on the field.

Contrary to the assertions of the image-makers, our stadiums are not the best in the world, nor is our ability to fill them, as shown in the England attendance of 32,008 at Elland Road on Thursday night, which was less than an average Leeds United gate. Those we can fill, we cannot get people into. Some 3,000 were not admitted to Brazil's match against Japan at Goodison Park on Tuesday because of a lack of turnstiles open. At least the desire to attend, on a miserable night, nailed the insult that the public cannot appreciate anything more than the clash-and-clamour of the Premiership.

There has indeed been cause for home gloom this week but at least the embarrassments of the Umbro Cup organisation serve as opportunities to improve matters for next summer's European Championship finals. Perhaps the same will be true of the England team, though those problems go much deeper and will take longer to rectify, in better coaching and development of young players.

But there has, too, been the joyous Brazilians to savour. It would be heartening if today, for 90 minutes, we could just forget our own troubles and give gratitude for the opponents' presence. If England are to lose, for once let us delight in the opposition rather than dwell on the domestic. As Venables' predecessor, Graham Taylor, might have put it: can we not knock it?

For today, Venables has chosen a team he hopes will strike a balance between the shortcomings of the match against Japan and the excesses of Sweden. In a team of five changes, one positional, Graeme Le Saux replaces Peter Beardsley on the left of midfield in an attempt to curb the forays of Jorginho while David Batty is expected to add some tackling to the midfield. Gary Neville replaces the hapless Barton. Paul Gascoigne is likely to be named a substitute again.

As tribute to the Brazilians, Venables considered using three central defenders and thought of Batty as a marker for the vibrant Juninho. The fear, however, was that Brazil's fluidity would pull apart any hasty reorganisation.

"The best team in the world," Venables acknowledges of the opposition. "In fact, a little bit better than the best team in the world." Indeed, Mario Zagallo has built on the success of last summer in the United States. More relaxed now that the burden of winning the World Cup for the first time since 1970 has been lifted, there is a freedom to them that reminds you of the game's potential. The development of Dunga from midfield holder to playmaker is at its heart.

To call Roberto Carlos a leftback is to render prosaic the poetic. The pace, the control, the positional sense, the shooting combine for a picture to be stored in the scrapbook. Then there is Juninho . . .

Discovering the 22-year-old Sao Paulo player this week has been like walking across a public park and feeling compelled to stop and watch by the sight of a kid playing with a skill and inhibition that lifts the spirits. Indeed, he resembles a kid. The evocative kit hangs on him; the famous No 10 sags on his back. The complexion is not all down to a week of English cuisine.

But this is a player well schooled as well as naturally gifted. The quick feet, the angles of his turns and runs, derive from confronting defenders who are also players rather than mere stoppers. He is a glider across the turf, recalling the art mislaid in Britain of going past people.

Another art mislaid in Britain should also be on view today: the change of pace both of individual and team. "The dynamics of the Brazilian team do not remain the same throughout the 90 minutes," their coach Zagallo said. "We are not like the electricity coming out of the light socket. We have the power when it is required but we also have patience. Speed is not everything."

The common denominator in England's widely erratic performances last week was a midfield unable both to support an attack in which Alan Shearer is going woefully to waste - five games now without a goal - and augment a defence admittedly inexperienced and second-choice. It illustrates the real dearth in Britain, that of the all-round midfield player. In that is the sad legacy of the English power game, which has bypassed him.

England are not entirely without hope today, however. Darren Anderton, for example, has emerged as an inventive international and the record against Brazil - England unbeaten in five - suggests that the opposition is usually content with a draw, although that may change today, with this hungry new crop playing for places in next month's Copa America in Uruguay.

On the home front, tomorrow it will probably be back to apparently more pressing matters, such as whether Arsenal's new manager, Bruce Rioch, will clamber on the money-go-round, whether Paul Ince will help Manchester United out of a financial hole, and whether the good but not-yet-that- good Stan Collymore really will go for pounds 8.5m.

However, it would be nice to remember when the Premiership is in full expensive clatter, and when England are inflatedly expected to beat Croatia in a match newly arranged at Wembley for 6 September - though, with Davor Suker, Alen Boksic and Zvonimir Boban they are one of the most exciting teams in Europe - the service the Brazilians have done us this week in the real exposure: that of what the game can be.

England (4-4-2): Flowers (Blackburn Rovers); G Neville (Manchester United), Scales (Liverpool), Cooper (Middlesbrough), Pearce (Nottingham Forest); Anderton (Tottenham Hotspur), Platt (Sampdoria), Batty, Le Saux; Shearer (all Blackburn Rovers), Sheringham (Tottenham Hotspur).