David James took a video compilation to Portugal of the dead-ball experts and penalty takers who might confront him in Euro 2004. Except one. "Believe it or not, in all the footage there wasn't any coverage of Zinédine Zidane," he admitted yesterday. "I'll have to have a word with my mate who prepares them for me."
Whether James was being serious or sending himself up was not entirely clear. Slowly but surely the usual camaraderie and laddishness are returning to the England camp. The players are still listening to Usher on the team coach, rather than switching to the Smiths or Joy Division, and when Sol Campbell was asked how he had been relaxing between games he replied: "Watching children's BBC."
That is not to say the players have got over the trauma of the brutal lesson meted out by France on Sunday. Not yet, anyway. "Personally, there were things I could have done better," said James. "The worst thing about analysing a game is that everything that went wrong could have been avoided. I've watched the game on video and it doesn't make happy viewing."
When James seeks an explanation from the FA's video technician he will discover that in France's games over the past year Zidane has not actually taken a penalty or shot directly at goal from a free-kick. Besides, even if the goalkeeper had been equipped with Zidane's full curriculum vitae he might not really have learned anything he did not know already, namely that the man whom Sir Alex Ferguson once ridiculously described as being nothing more than a "performing seal" could actually land the ball on a one euro coin from 60 yards.
English football insists on finding scapegoats whenever things do not go the way of the national team and, at a time when there is hardly an abundance of talented home-grown goalkeepers, James has been identified among the most obvious culprits. He admits he could have done better at the free-kick with which Zidane left him rooted to the spot.
"It's the last minute of the game, you're aware he's capable of doing anything with the ball, you take a half-step to the left but then he brings it at you back over the wall," he said. "It was a great free-kick, don't get me wrong, but to win games you have to make saves and I'd liked to have made that one."
He could still reflect on the "huge buzz" of making his first appearance in a major tournament, of seeing so many English fans shoehorned into Benfica's Estadio da Luz and a "great match until the 91st minute".
Yet there are excruciating memories too, and his recollection of France's last attack, Steven Gerrard's back-pass and flattening Thierry Henry brought another wince of anguish to those chiselled features.
"It's a back-pass, so you can't handle it. You have a split second to decide whether to commit a back-pass free-kick or to go in with your feet. I went in feet first, but Henry's pretty quick and he got the touch in front of me. I made my decision. Frustrating. Very frustrating. You have to give credit to Zidane, though. He's shown why he's been the best player in the world. He had two opportunities and put them both away."
Campbell argued later that it was unfair for any blame to be attached to James, but it is a goalkeeper's prerogative to be his own harshest critic. "The thing is, if someone took three penalties against me and put them all in the top corner I would still question why I did not save them," he said. "No goal goes in that I am happy about."
It is an attitude which has established him as Sven-Goran Eriksson's first-choice goalkeeper ahead of Paul Robinson and Ian Walker, and he is not about to change his ways now.
Last night, indeed, James could be located in his hotel room doing some more homework. The video department at Soho Square has armed him with a tape of Switzerland's dead-ball specialists, notably Hakan Yakin.
This time James can only hope it proves more useful than the last one.
