There will be no grandiose statements about lifting the World Cup from the Italian even though a friendly victory in Germany has been added to that amazing four-goal qualifying campaign triumph in Croatia.

Capello has been around far too long to hold himself as a hostage to fortune.

Instead, he will remain focused on the present, not setting targets and not looking back. And the next test is a trip to Spain in February.

"What would satisfy me? Winning," he laughed.

"My job is to look to the future. It has always been like that.

"We have to carry on working and training hard to improve on everything we are at present."

Capello admitted that in the immediate aftermath of his first game in charge, he never expected England to be this far forward at the end of 2008.

In accepting the job of succeeding Steve McClaren, Capello knew he had taken on a pretty stiff task. It was not until he watched his new charges labour to victory against Switzerland in February that he realised how difficult it was going to be.

"We are further forward than I thought we would be after our first year," he said.

"I always watched the Premier League, so I knew the players.

"But when we played against Switzerland I understood the work was going to be very hard. It was a very big job."

The challenge was obvious. He needed to get a group of players widely regarded as some of the best in the world to hit the peak of their powers when they pulled on the Three Lions.

"We needed to recover the confidence and spirit," Capello continued.

"The players have a lot of ability but they were only showing it in training and in the Premier League, not with the national team.

"Changing that is one of the most important things we have done."

It has brought England to their present position with astounding rapidity if Wednesday's victory over Germany in Berlin is any guide.

The win brought a quite remarkable year to a close, although Capello is not bothered about looking back.

All he is interested in is the future as he tries to nudge England on, knowing the path will get more hazardous the further his players go.

"We have to keen improving," he said. "We always have to do that.

"We have done a lot of work and improved a lot of things. We are at a different level now compared to where we were before.

"But the last stage is not easy."

No-one expects it to be any other way. However, confidence can be taken from the existence of a game plan, something that seemed to elude McClaren totally and was apparent under Sven-Goran Eriksson only until the 2002 World Cup defeat to Brazil.

In adhering to that formula, Capello knows he can slot different players into the same holes.

It is why, as absences continued to mount until eight key men were missing and the nation feared its usual German beating, he was not really that worried.

"When I was losing players to injury, I was not happy," said Capello.

"But I always see the glass as half full rather than half empty.

"It meant I had a chance to look at different players.

"It is important to have one system. Then, everybody has to know what to do. You need that because the players change."