The FA's director of football development, Sir Trevor Brooking, says Fabio Capello is bringing out the best in England's footballers.

"It's getting back to the passing style he wants," he said. "Everything is quite compressed in space to put pressure on the technique of players, one or two touch. The game is becoming like that, under pressure in tight areas, not to give the ball away. Fabio has encouraged that in this group of players.

"Fabio said to me he looked at the Russia game [during Euro 2008 qualifying] and said 'You should never have lost that, you should have gone on to win by two or three when one up'. They were sitting back, so we have to develop a mentality where we push on and win ball in areas up the field. Fabio did that in little sessions, [saying] push up in units. You must get numbers forward, you can't push up in isolation. At times in years gone by we've attacked and got only one or two in the box, but now four or five get in the box, so get more options to score.

"For the first six months people were looking at Fabio and saying there was no pace in the team but he was delving," he continued. "Then Theo [Walcott] came in. We still need to produce more creativity, flair, one-on-one individuality to break teams down. When [Alexander] Hleb, [Cesc] Fabregas and [Tomas] Rosicky were playing together at Arsenal they were fantastic to watch. I went as often as I could.

"We are sometimes reluctant to knock the ball in when somebody is marked. Frank [Lampard] and Stevie [Gerrard] can do it. Fabio works on that every time. Gareth [Barry] is good at that. The importance is to get that confidence and understanding in each other."