It was the biggest ever defeat to Germany and the worst result England have ever suffered at a World Cup.

Capello's position is bound to come under intense scrutiny only five weeks after having a clause removed from his £6million-a-year deal that would allow either party to terminate after the World Cup.

"I want to speak with the chairman and then decide my future," said Capello.

"I need to know whether the FA have confidence in me or not."

When asked if he would resign, he replied: "Absolutely not."

The early indications are Capello will remain in his job.

Senior sources within the Club England camp who will determine whether the Italian stays or not have indicated that their stance on Capello - that he is the right man to take the Three Lions forward - has not shifted as a result of one single, albeit controversial result.

The men who will sit in judgment on Capello are Richards, new Club England managing director Adrian Bevington and FA director of football Sir Trevor Brooking, all of whom are in South Africa, plus acting FA chief executive Alex Horne, who is not.

They must assess whether the raging injustice at the disallowed Frank Lampard goal that would have pulled England level after they had fallen 2-0 behind is merely papering over the cracks of a disappointing campaign.

After claiming his side were capable of reaching the World Cup final, Capello has seen his men record just one win from four games and arguably reach their potential only once - against Slovenia in Port Elizabeth last Wednesday.

"When you lose the manager gets criticised," said Capello.

"We didn't play too badly in the first game against USA, just made a big mistake.

"We played a bad game against Algeria but we played well against Slovenia.

"Today, if the referee had whistled for the goal, it would have been different. It was too big a mistake."

Even Germany coach Joachim Low and man of the match Thomas Muller agreed that the South American officials made a huge error in disallowing Lampard's goal.

The Chelsea midfielder let fly from 20 yards and saw the ball crash down off the bar, just as it did when these two sides met in the World Cup final in 1966.

This time, though, there was no debate about whether it crossed the line as it crashed down.

TV replays showed it was clearly two feet over the line but assistant referee Mauricio Espinosa inexplicably failed to spot it and play was allowed to go on.

"We heard the ball was behind the line," admitted Muller.

"It was a bit of luck, which we had to seize with both hands."

"It should have been given," added Low.

Understandably, Capello was rather more strident in his views.

"We scored," he claimed.

"It is incredible. In this period of technology, in this period where we can have five referees, we cannot decide if that was a goal or not.

"We have to speak about this goal. We have to speak about a mistake from the linesman - and the referee because I could see it had gone in from the touchline. I saw the ball bounce and go over the line.

"I do not understand this mistake."

Capello was intent on allowing his fury to obscure the fact a supposedly superior England side had found themselves deservedly two down and chasing the game in the first place.

"That one goal would have made the game completely different," argued Capello.

"We scored two goals and at that moment, I saw Germany suffer a lot.

"They played on the counter-attack after that, and played very well. They scored the third and fourth on the counter-attack and we didn't play after that."

Capello was at a loss to explain why his players had performed so far below expectations, other than cite their general tiredness after a long season.

"Look, we probably arrived a little bit tired at the end of the season.

"But after the game that they played against Slovenia, we suffered from Germany's speed today.

"But I say again, I am sure that a big mistake from the referee stopped us from going forward."

Low though took a different perspective on how the contest unfolded.

He confirmed Germany had targeted a defensive weakness in English ranks which his young side exploited to the full.

"We knew that the midfielders - Gerrard and Lampard - always support the forwards and that their midfield would be open," he said.

"We knew there would be spaces.

"Our objective was to set Terry up with Klose to force him to come out of the defence.

"We knew the full-backs would be very much to the side, and that would create space that we could penetrate.

"We could have been 3-0 up in the first half because we did penetrate them."

It does however appear that Low has a group of players - based around the victorious Under-21 side that gave England an even bigger mauling in Sweden last summer - who are better than the much-hyped stars Capello was able to turn out.

Muller did not even reach Sweden, his emergence in the Bayern Munich side coming after that one-sided affair.

However, the 20-year-old Bayern Munich forward, plus Mesut Ozil and Manuel Neuer proved to be the bedrock of a superior team performance that England, for all their anger, totally failed to match.

Wayne Rooney was amongst the biggest disappointments, but Lampard also failed to score in South Africa, Gerrard did not have the impact he would have wanted and Terry's lack of pace was exposed once he lost the guiding influence of Rio Ferdinand to injury before the tournament began.

Whether the FA view this as Capello's fault will be discovered in the coming days, although at least in Low he had an ally.

"We knew that we would have to try and tackle the English early on in midfield and take away any space they would have beyond midfield," he said.

"We knew they might become impatient and lose their discipline. We did that successfully.

"But Fabio Capello is very experienced and extremely knowledgeable. I bow down to him."