Lager and crisps did the job at Italia ‘90

As Fabio Capello’s England team prepare for next month’s World Cup, the Daily Telegraph’s Jim White takes a nostalgic look back at England’s efforts at Italia ’90 and discusses the differences between the plans of Capello and then boss Bobby Robson.

It was revealed this week that Fabio Capello's nutritionist had ordered in the following essentials for the England lads during their forthcoming stay at their Royal Bafokeng hideaway: 30 packs of seaweed sheets, 24 bottles of peri-peri sauce and 12 tubes of wasabi paste.

And you thought they were heading to South Africa to compete in the World Cup, not the initial stages of Masterchef.

The thought of Wazza, JT and Big Frank indulging in an after-match snack of antioxidant-rich peppers to help reduce the levels of lactic acid in their blood stream, somehow kept popping into my head when I watched One Night In Turin, the new movie adaptation of Pete Davies's wonderful book about Italia 90, All Played Out.

As Davies himself reckons, remembering that long-lost summer of Des Lynam, Gary Lineker and Nessun Dorma, "everything has changed".

Not least in the stuff England players consume. Back then, Davies recalls one evening happening across three of the squad members on a beach a few days before the quarter-final against Cameroon, innocently refuelling on lager and crisps. This summer, they are much more likely to be spending their down time rolling their own sushi.

Back then, the fans following their national team were fresh faced, youthful and, as they went about their business terrifying the locals and battling with the riot squad, draped in the Union Flag.

In South Africa, England will mostly be followed by the over-forties, who discarded the symbol of unionism around 1996 in favour of the cross of St George and, far from provoking them, will be treading warily at every stage for fear of advertising themselves to some of the less hospitable locals.

More to the point, compared to Capello's all-embracing professionalism, in 1990 it all seemed so amateurish. There was an insistent romanticism about Bobby Robson's wing-and-prayer Italian campaign.