The waiting game is over, the long preamble finished.

And now we will start to find out what Fabio Capello and his team are made of.

As Capello put his players through their final session at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium last night, the signs were that the enormity of the task was beginning to dawn.

Capello knows there can be no excuses, that he must select a team that can do his reputation justice, that can make the country proud.

For the simple fact is that it is what happens over the next 30 days that will be the true measure of the Italian's England reign.

All the rest, no matter how impressive the qualifying campaign, is nothing more than propaganda, as Capello conceded.

"I feel a great responsibility," said Capello. "I feel a nation, the whole people, but I always like difficult things.

"And I think the players are really happy and, at this moment, right physically and mentally. They are all ready to play.

"Their minds are really focused on this game that we have to play, and we are sure that we will go forward in this competition.

"Usually, the first game is hard because the expectation is really big, the pressure is big. We've stayed here for eight days and trained very well. I saw the best training this evening, and we've trained really well.

"But the challenge is to win. Everything else is just words. We have to win. No more."

It is and Capello's likely decision to revert to his qualifying shape, with Michael Carrick taking the "Gareth Barry" role alongside Frank Lampard and skipper Steven Gerrard on the left, is the Italian going with his version of the tried and trusted.

That may change if he has a late tinker, bringing James Milner in on the left and moving Gerrard to the centre but the other selections, handing Robert Green the starting shirt in goal and asking Emile Heskey to create the space for Wayne Rooney, were decisive.

Although the ghosts of Belo Horizonte in 1950 are now virtually all extinct, little more than grainy black and white images remaining, they would be raised again were England to fall to another humbling defeat against the United States.

What England must do is seize the initiative, for Aaron Lennon to add delivery to his jet-heeled pace on the right, above all for Rooney to make it his stage, while John Terry shows why, in his head, he remains captain.

Capello added: "The armband would suit him very well because he continues to be a leader. It's as if he was still wearing it now."

The Italian needs a team of leaders and is determined there will be no repeat of the chaos that enveloped the Azzurri side of which he was a part in 1974.

"What is important is the confidence of the players and to be focused at every moment," said Capello. "Thery need that because of the altitude and because the balls are terrible - just terrible.

"It's impossible to control when you play long balls. But I hope that I can help the players to be perfect in every moment and perform like a team.

"In 1974 I was a player but I remember everything that happened. I studied everything.

"We prepared every moment when we stayed in Austria and here, to make sure we do not make the same mistakes that Italy did in Germany.

"This tournament is different, just as being a manager with England is not like being a club manager. If you lose two games at a club, you can recover your level. Here, it's in or out.

"I have told my players the US are really dangerous at set-pieces and corners. When you play and try to hurt them you have to be aware the counter-attack is really fast.

"As a manger I respect all the teams. But I want to see the English spirit of the team that I saw in qualification for the World Cup and a team that is really compact on the pitch."

Capello will not allow anything less from his team but there must also be the confidence that has so often been found wanting when it truly mattered.

Tonight is the test. Tonight we will see the truth. Tonight we will discover if we have been sold an illusion or the reality. Tonight.