Amid the back-stabbing nastiness and, from one particular critic, the unadulterated joy over the departure of Sven-Goran Eriksson and tearful captain David Beckham, a word of caution. There may come a time, just possibly, when we look back on the last five years of English football as one of the golden eras for our international side.

And I'm not joking.

Sure, we were never very impressive in Germany 2006. Nor in Euro 2004. There were a few moments during the 2002 World Cup. But let's not forget (with a nod to Alf Ramsey, 1974, and Graham Taylor, 1994) each time we qualified for the major tournaments with comparitive ease from tricky groups, we kept a reasonably settled side, we overcame glitches like defeat against Northern Ireland and Scotland... and reached the quarter-finals.

Actually, that's not bad for a side that generally hovers around the edge of the top ten in the FIFA rankings. A side built on the back of a foreign-dominated Premiership. A side beset by club managers desperate to protect their few homegrown players from the rigours of international football. A side with a public that thinks just because we invented the game we should dominate it as we did... well, a hundred years ago perhaps.

Yes, I know the current generation are supposedly golden, that they were born to win a major championship. They still could, in 2008, given that the current squad has an average age of around 27. Apart from Beckham and perhaps Gary Neville, both 31, nobody is on the verge of international retirement.

Steve McClaren will take over and, if the qualifying group is successfully conquered, there's no reason to think we can't be as good again.

But just to achieve what Eriksson did, cruising through a qualifying group featuring Croatia, Russia and Israel, along with Estonia, Macedonia and Andorra, McClaren will have to tread carefully.

And let's be honest here, just how far were England from glory in the last

three major championships? A fluky Ronaldinho free-kick did for us in 2002.

A disallowed Sol Campbell header and penalties put us out of 2004. A dodgy

sending-off and more penalties left us bereft in 2006. In fact, what about the foul on Aaron Lennon in the box? The chance Joe Cole blasted over the bar? The Lampard free-kick and Lennon's mishit follow up?

We were much better than them. Portugal didn't manage a shot.

The truth is, in none of those great Sven disappointments were England ever outclassed, in none of those huge international competitions did we get the impression everybody else was magnificently better than our lot. If you did, you're deluding yourselves.

England, under Sven-Goran Eriksson, have been pretty efficient. He leaves with a record as good as Sir Alf Ramsey, Terry Venables, Bobby Robson and the rest. All he failed to do was get us over the quarter-final hurdle, denied each time by the flamboyant but unnaturally lucky Luiz Felipe Scolari, at first in charge of a Brazil side that went on to win the World Cup, then Portugal on home soil, now a very ordinary Portugal who surely won't get beyond France on Wednesday to Sunday's final.

You can pick holes in Eriksson's approach. Talk about last-minute changes to the shape of the side, slag him off for taking young Theo Walcott, slam him for never dropping Beckham. But what about the positives? Does anybody remember 1994 when we didn't even get to the USA? Does anyone remember the shambles of defeat in Wembley's final match against Germany under Kevin Keegan? The madness of Glenn Hoddle and Eileen Drewery which made our side a laughing stock?

Not since Terry Venables and the semi-final defeat of 1996 have the players appreciated their national boss as much as Eriksson. He is popular with the players, he makes them feel comfortable, he listens and offers only quiet advice.

Reading some of the critics after this exit, you'd have thought England had gone out behind Trinidad & Tobago in round one, that Rooney had murdered a Portuguese, that Beckham never scored a vital goal in his 95 games for

England.

It's rubbish. We need perspective. England reached the last eight with Beckham playing a major role in three key goals, they were desperately unlucky not to get to the last four where they would have had a real chance against France (though with John Terry suspended, Sol Campbell would have

had to mark Arsenal team-mate Thierry Henry), Rooney should not have been sent off. He was being fouled by two Portguese players and accidentally caught one of them, then his so-called mate Ronaldo got involved and it was all over.

Steven Gerrard said: "I'd be absolutely disgusted if a team-mate did that to me."

Losing Michael Owen to injury was the sort of thing nobody can prepare for.

Sure, Eriksson made mistakes. Big, stupid ones. He slept with the wrong people, he picked the wrong people, he chose the wrong formation, he wore heeled shoes, he looked like a professor instead of a Strathclyde dock worker.

But he kept us in there, slugging away with the best. If Steve McClaren can

consistently get England to the quarter-finals of the next three big tournaments, he'll be happy even if we won't be.

If he can leave us coming away from each championship feeling We Wuz Robbed (and that's how the average fan feels) despite underperforming, that's not the end of the world.

One day, we may just miss the passing of the Eriksson/Beckham axis. We might even regret the loss of Tord Grip. And Nancy Dell'Olio.

Because like it or not, England weren't that bad in 2002, 2004 or 2006. They

were a slice of luck away from the semi-finals. A couple of Beckham free-kicks/Lampard shots/Crouch headers from real glory.

But I will agree with the critics on one point. Why couldn't Sven, for £5m a year, teach half the side to take penalties?