England’s legion of loyal but long-suffering football fans will be filing holiday requests on Thursday morning for long spells of next summer after Fabio Capello’s team swept into the World Cup finals in South Africa with a hatful of goals and no little style on Wednesday night.

A crushing 5-1 victory over Croatia in front of nearly 90,000 raucous, partying fans at Wembley secured an automatic spot for the finals and maintained the Italian coach’s unblemished record in England’s qualifying group.