Fabio Capello put his finger to his lips and wore a quizzical look.
A shade more than three minutes gone against Belarus and England had scored, courtesy of Peter Crouch.
The beanpole. The lamp post. The robot dancer. The last resort. Well, not quite the last resort. That is the uneasy position occupied right now by Michael Owen, who sat up in the Wembley stands, while Crouch celebrated, with a rueful look on his face and a mobile phone in his hand.
Oh, to have been a fly hovering over that particular text.
"That's me stuffed for the World Cup," might have been the gist.
And that just might be the case. Owen can point to 40 goals in 89 internationals for his country. He still has his supporters. He still believes he can be England's number one striker.
But on a night when Capello was looking for a Plan B in the absence of the injured Wayne Rooney and the sidelined Emile Heskey, Crouch gave him Plan C with two tap-ins in a comfortable 3-0 victory.
Of course, statistics never tell the whole story, but when it comes to Crouch they are a pretty revealing read.
The Tottenham striker has now scored 18 goals in 35 games for England. Positively prolific.
Contrast that with Heskey, who has scored just seven goals in 57 caps. Positively parlous.
Yes, Heskey is there to bring the best out of Rooney and so far that has worked as England's nine wins from 10 qualifiers testify.
But there is no getting away from it. Crouch makes things happen.
He is awkward. He instils a nervousness in central defenders. His telescopic legs can reach places other strikers can only dream of and they came in more than useful in his slow-motion tap-in from Gabriel Agbonlahor's cross.
If only he could head a ball like Alan Shearer then he would be some threat.
But what an option to have on the bench in South Africa.
And yet it gives Capello a problem. For one, if he were to opt for Crouch and Heskey as two of his five strikers then he would be taking two men who cannot even hold down a place in their respective clubs' first teams.
For another, Capello's preference is for pace and dynamic movement. And Crouch delivers neither.
But he scores goals. And here's a thing. He does so when he starts matches, not as the impact player which is how most people might view him.
Time for more statistics. Stick with them, they are interesting.
In Crouch's 11 caps since the Italian took charge he has scored just four goals, but all when he has been part of the starting XI.
In total he has started 17 games for England and only two of his 18 goals have come when he has come off the bench.
A pattern is emerging. Crouch is no supersub. He is no modern-day David Fairclough, who weaved his legend from the Anfield bench in the 1970s. He is a consistent goal-scorer. Intelligent in possession. Astute in his positioning. Not pleasing on the eye perhaps. Not one who fits snugly into Capello's ambition of fluent, adventurous football.
His 6ft 7in height also induces England to play more route one football than the manager might like. But Capello is nothing if not a pragmatist. And you cannot ignore goals.
There were not too many other things for him to learn from a match which, with qualification issues already decided, was meaningless result-wise to both sides.
The Mexican Wave which swung around the Wembley arch before a tedious first half was halfway through told the story.
Not that the 76,000 fans cared as they celebrated a convincing nine-out-of-10 qualifying campaign.
The biggest cheers, unsurprisingly, were for David Beckham's appearance just before the hour mark, his first touch producing the corner from which Shaun Wright-Phillips scored England's second.
That's Beckham, who bizarrely won man of the match for half an hour's work. But then he makes things happen. So does Crouch. Just something for Capello to ponder.
