Ferdinand was a towering influence for England

By Frank Malley, PA Chief Sports Writer, Osaka

It is more like the Grand National than the World Cup.

First France fall at the first fence without scoring a goal - minus fight, lacking solidity and with barely a flash of Gallic flair.

Then Argentina fail to beat Sweden and join the teams piled up at football's equivalent of Becher's Brook, seeking the swiftest plane ticket out of Japan.

Hot favourites doing cold turkey at a World Cup full of good sides but no great teams.

A World Cup packed with thrills and spills and good players but no great individuals. Just the sort of World Cup, in fact, in which an honest, industrious team such as England, with the talismanic presence of David Beckham, inspiration of Paul Scholes, solidity of Rio Ferdinand and menace of Michael Owen, could come up on the rails and cause the final lingering upset.

After all, didn't manager Sven-Goran Eriksson stretch his knowledge of idiomatic English to describe his team as "dark horses" before they left the British Isles?

It is still early days but having negotiated a tricky goalless draw against Nigeria to progress past the opening round there is a momentum beginning to accompany England.

They are a squad growing in confidence, a team which has confronted its shortcomings so glaringly exposed by Sweden in the first match and which is playing to its strengths - a team also which gives the impression it has a gear change.

Such a commodity will be essential considering the prize of coming second in the so-called 'Group of Death' is a confrontation with Denmark on Saturday in Niigata.

Ordinarily, a date with Denmark would be considered tough but by no means not negotiable. That remains the case.

This Denmark side, however, have the psychological boost of just having booted the world champions out of the tournament, the added bonus for winning their group of an extra day's rest and the promise that the Scandinavian footballing cycle, which seems to come around once a decade, is at the point of delivery.

The Danes, remember, produced an extraordinary run to win the European Championships 10 years ago after being admitted to the tournament only when Yugoslavia were evicted because of the war in their region. The Laudrup brothers almost took them to the dizzy heights of a World Cup semi-final at France 98, losing a thrilling quarter-final 3-2 to Brazil.

There are signs, not least in the form of Feyenoord's Jon Dahl Tomasson and PSV Eindhoven's Dennis Rommedahl, that the Danes have once again built a side without big stars but with championship pedigree.

Rommedahl clocks 10.2 seconds for the 100metres, a sprinting time good enough to make an Olympic semi-final. As such he is even swifter than Owen, a sobering thought for Rio Ferdinand and Sol Campbell to mull over for the next couple of days.

However, while there was a solidity about England's draw against Nigeria, a game in which they had to avoid defeat, there was also a concern.

England have scored just two goals in three games, one of them via a Beckham corner, the other from a Beckham penalty.

By no stretch of the imagination could such set-piece reliance be described as prolific and, almost invariably, teams which win World Cups score goals. Plenty of them.

It has long been clear that England's gateway to ultimate glory in Japan was the ability of Owen to prove his world class credentials with a hatful of goals.

He troubled the statisticians against Paraguay and South Korea in warm-up games but it is now nine months since Owen scored his last competitive goal against Albania.

Admittedly injuries have intervened and no-one would want to saddle him with even more pressure but if England are to overcome Denmark and go on to a likely quarter-final against the Brazilians Owen simply must deliver.

He rarely looked like doing so on a sticky, three-shirt afternoon in Osaka when the mercury rose to the mid-nineties, though the humidity actually dropped several percent from the pore-spouting experience of the last few days.

It was the sort of day to get the job done with minimum fuss and maximum efficiency and if England's approach was overly cautious then there was much to lose.

It was a tricky fixture. Nigeria had been unlucky to lose both their previous games. They had a creative attacking talent in Jay Jay Okocha, playing his last international before retirement, but they also had a goalkeeper in Vincent Enyeama who treated crosses as if they came with hot coals attached.

Time after time he punched or fumbled or simply found himself yards out of position. England, however, could not quite make the crucial contact as Nigeria contented themselves in playing intricate, pretty patterns which rarely led to anything of substance.

Despite a thunderous shot from Paul Scholes which Enyeama pushed onto the post and the occasional thrust from Owen and Heskey England's work also lacked genuine invention.

On the plus side, however, Ferdinand was majestic in defence, calm, composed, his positioning sound and distribution efficient.

So was Campbell, and Danny Mills particularly impressed with his forays up the right, his energy masking the still fragile fitness of Beckham.

The bottom line, however, is that England are through and there were many sceptics who wouldn't have put as much as a fiver on that scenario even a fortnight ago.

Ten minutes after the final whistle Beckham led out his team again to warm down, at the end of which he stripped off his vest and threw it into the waiting crowd of Japanese well-wishers to assorted shrieks and screams.

And the thought arose - don't put your shirt on England but if you want a National-type run for your money you could do worse.