England were disappointed not to have gone further in the World Cup but have learned a lot and hoped to do better next time. The lads had done their best but it was not to be.

The scene has now been played out in a dozen World Cups or European Championships since England's isolated success in 1966. Unless the domestic fixture list relents sufficiently to allow the national coach more time with his squad and the players more rest between engagements the script will not change.

When the Football Association sanctioned the breakaway, which led to the formation of the Premier League 10 years ago, it did so in the belief that the move would help the national team. England, the FA stated in its 1991 Blueprint for Football, would be at the apex of a new pyramid of which the Premier League would be an integral part.

The reality is that the Premier League, or Premiership, has become its own pyramid with Mammon at its apex and the England team as helpless an onlooker as the Sphinx. Far from benefiting the development of the national side, moreover, the Premier League has hampered its progress with foreign imports.

True, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Leeds United have between them provided a solid England side which has done better than expected, given the severity of the draw, the loss of Steven Gerrard and Gary Neville, David Beckham being no more than 60% fit, and, to rub it in, facing Brazil with Michael Owen able to last only half the match.

Yet there is no escaping the fact that among the leading English clubs most goals are either scored or made by foreigners, the best passers are foreigners and with the exception of Rio Ferdinand the best defenders are foreigners.

It would help England if its footballers could play less often. Since taking over the squad 18 months ago Eriksson has been pressing the point that no other European country places so many demands on its players.

He is echoing his predecessors but while the English game accepts the need for reducing the fixture list few clubs could stand the loss of income this would involve and even fewer players would accept the reductions in salary that might be necessary to make it happen.

Not surprisingly therefore Eriksson has more or less given up hope of seeing the burden on his squad eased. He will have to qualify for the 2004 European Championship, and from a group containing newly potent Turkey, under the usual conditions.

"We need less teams in the Premier League but that's impossible," he said, just before England flew home. "We also need them to have a winter break but I don't know if we will get that." A glance at the Boxing Day attendance figures should put him right there.

It is surely no accident that going into the World Cup the fittest player in the England squad was Owen Hargreaves, who plays for Bayern Munich in the 18-team German league where a footballer's career is less of a treadmill. Before Eriksson took his squad to Dubai to begin training in earnest fitness and blood tests revealed that his Premiership players were showing worrying signs of fatigue.

This may explain why, in each of their five World Cup matches and particularly against Sweden and Brazil, England fell away after half-time. Eriksson put this down to tiredness - a bit of a handicap in a team relying so much on pace.

"Eriksson talks about pace," said the Brazilian coach, Felipe Scolari, after his 10 men had passed England to oblivion in Shizuoka. "But nothing can run faster than the ball." Perhaps that was the trouble. England spent too much energy running after the ball because they could not run well enough with it.

There is a counter-argument, though. England have had a better World Cup than France, Italy and Argentina, who had more gifted squads and whose players have a lighter domestic workload. Even Arsenal's French contingent gets a rest when Arsène Wenger rotates the team.

It also needs to be remembered that the successful club sides of the past, notably Liverpool, regularly used fewer players in seasons involving 60 matches or more, although they did not have to divide their attention between the league championship and the Champions League.

Yet the intensity of the game is even greater now than it was then. The relaxation of the offside law, for example, means players having to cover more ground at a greater pace.

In general, levels of fitness in English football have never been so high. It is just unfortunate that when the England team needs its players to be at their peak so many of them are battered, physically and mentally, by the labours of the previous nine months.

Lions in winter, lambs in spring - that's England and nothing is going to change.

After a short break the members of Eriksson's squad will be reporting for pre-season training and in next to no time memories of Japan will be overtaken by a resumption of Alex Ferguson's moods and Wenger's myopia.