A DOWNBEAT Fabio Capello last night admitted that England’s players have failed to handle the pressure of playing at the World Cup finals.

Despite boasting an array of Premier League stars, England were unable to break down an Algerian side containing players from Slavia Sofia, Valenciennes and Nacional Madeira as they struggled to a goalless draw in Cape Town’s Green Point Stadium.

The result, which follows last weekend’s draw with the United States, leaves England two points behind Group C leaders Slovenia, who they face in Port Elizabeth on Wednesday.

A victory in that match would guarantee their progress to the knock-out stage, and could even see them finish on top of the pile, but there was little in last night’s performance to suggest they are capable of arresting an alarming slump in form that began before they even arrived in South Africa.

Last night’s performance was the worst England have produced under Capello, and even though the majority of the squad boast experience of previous major tournaments and key European matches, the Italian feels they have buckled under the pressure of a World Cup finals.

“This is not the England that I know,” said Capello, who will not have felt like celebrating his 64th birthday yesterday evening. “I remember that when I started as England manager, I saw the same things at Wembley.

“The number of mistakes being made by the players is incredible – not keeping the ball, missing easy passes. It’s really incredible when you think of the quality of the English players.

“I think it’s the pressure.

The pressure is so big that the performance of the players is not as high as it should be.

“In the next game, we have to forget all about that performance.

We have to forget about playing with fear or without confidence.”

Whereas England could at least point to a handful of missed opportunities against the United States, there were no redeeming features to emerge from last night’s game.

Wayne Rooney turned in arguably his most ineffective display ever in an England shirt, while a re-jigged midfield that included the returning Gareth Barry appeared disjointed throughout.

Capello has been watching England’s players at their Royal Bafokeng training base for the last fortnight, and claims he had no inkling that a performance like yesterday’s was in the offing.

“I think we have an excellent training camp and the players have been training really well all together,” he said.

“They have been training really well and really hard, and I haven’t seen anything different at all.

“This is the team that more or less played all the games in qualifying for the World Cup.

The problem is not the training or anything like that. It’s the same players that were really good, but at the moment, they are not so good like a team.

“I hope that, after one big performance, then the minds of the players will be free.

Then, we can play like the England team I know. This is really important.”

Where that big performance is going to come from, though, remains to be seen.

Ordinarily, England would look to Rooney for inspiration, but the striker was so far off the pace yesterday that it is hard to imagine him recovering his peak form in time to face Slovenia.

“I don’t know the answer,” said Capello, when he was asked to explain Rooney’s below-par performance. “But I don’t like to speak about the performance of one player. I prefer to speak about the performance of the team. Rooney played like Rooney - that’s not the problem.”

Towards the end of his postmatch press conference, an Algerian journalist asked Capello if he would resign if England failed to progress beyond the group stage.

“It’s too early to speak about that,” he said. “We have to wait.” The fear, for England supporters, is that the time to answer the question will arrive on Wednesday.