We have to improve our passing play, although we defended rather well. We have to try to play good football in a big tournament for 90 minutes. Not just for 35 minutes.”And should he have made any changes against Brazil? “Well, we discussed telling our four defenders to stop attacking after half an hour, which is poor football, but maybe would have stopped their first goal You never know. Maybe they would have attacked us even more because we were sitting back.”Injuries to Manchester United’s Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, Wes Brown and Gary Neville, together with Leeds’ Robbie Fowler, will give the opportunity for him to scrutinise some new faces in the 23-man squad that will be announced tomorrow.Leeds’ Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate are available once more, and Chelsea’s John Terry is too.

“It’s very good because now I’m a free man,” said Eriksson, with a smile “I can pick whoever I want. I was not obliged to do it before [refrain from picking players awaiting court proceedings], but I agreed to.”Eriksson watched Bowyer against Manchester City in Leeds’ opening game and his assistant, Tord Grip, was at Birmingham yesterday He was asked if the midfielder’s character concerned him. “It would be very bad of me to judge a player without knowing him,” he said. “I’m not referring to Lee Bowyer directly, but in life you can change.

If you do something stupid, it doesn’t mean you have to keep on doing stupid things.”Bowyer’s clubmate Alan Smith, who was a revelation both in terms of his all-round play and his maturity in the European Under-21 Championships, appears certain to be called up. “Yes, he’s very interesting,” said Eriksson, who clearly values the striker’s versatility “You can see that he lives for football. He’s a winner and he hates to lose.” Nicky Barmby, who scored the first goal in Eriksson’s tenure of the England team, is also in contention, while David Dunn has registered his intention of forcing his way into the England set-up with an authoritative start to the season. “If he goes on like this he will get a chance,” the coach said of the Blackburn Rovers midfielder.Eriksson was at West Ham yesterday, presumably with an eye on Joe Cole, Trevor Sinclair, Michael Carrick, David James and Jermain Defoe, though he believes the last-named needs more exper-ience The choice of goal- keepers will be most intriguing. David Seaman is likely to participate for at least part of the game against Portugal – almost as a declaration of faith from Eriksson, following Seaman’s misjudgment of Ron-aldinho’s free-kick which ended England’s World Cup Leeds’ Paul Robinson could be called up.

If so, at the expense of team-mate Nigel Martyn.Eriksson was questioned about several areas that troubled England supporters. They included England’s apparent propensity for the long ball, particularly in the second half of the quarter-final. He maintains that he and and his coach, Steve McClaren, attempted to get the message across that it was not what was required. “It’s not that we like to knock long balls, but if there’s no movement because they have no energy that’s the last alternative you have,” he said.It was suggested to him that England lacked passion at some stages. “That’s what it looked like, but I wouldn’t use the word passion,” he retorted “I would say we were exhausted. We tried to attack, but when you don’t have the energy it’s very difficult.