To Lord Triesman of the FA, Rupert Murdoch of Sky, and Mark Thompson of the BBC, a plea to you all: I beg you, never let this happen again.

The only verdict possible from this first internet-only screening of an England international was that it provided incontrovertible evidence that the white heat of technology is still just a dull glow in this country.

Watching this via the web may have been all right in South Korea where every apartment is wired up to high-speed internet cables; in Britain we are in the stone age by comparison and the experience is one nobody would care to repeat.

Even on the high-definition version, the picture was so indistinct that, unless there was a close-up, the England players were merely white-shirted blobs scurrying about the screen of the laptop.

The commentary was so uninspired that it was glaringly obvious the pundits were squinting at a telly in a Middlesex studio rather than dodging flares in Dnipropetrovsk.

The only positive anyone could draw was that it might appeal to the type of footballing purist who hates the in-your-face approach to live televised football 2009-style and harks back to the good old days of the 1970 World Cup when we were just so grateful to watch the game in colour.

I had given it every chance: the sofa was just as comfortable, the bowl of cheese and onion crisps close at hand, a bottle of pop chilled from the fridge (no it wasn't Tizer, even despite the 1970s experience).

I was even quite excited as I logged on, a slight thrill at taking part in a brand new approach to live football, and a slight nervousness too as to whether my login would work.

The first problem was that I couldn't hear anything. I turned every volume on the computer up to full, but even then leaning forward one could only just hear the burblings of Tony Jones and David Pleat.

"Is that it?" asked the nine-year-old television critic sitting on my left, in a tone of disgust.

He lasted just five minutes of this brave new world before deciding that it was a poor substitute for a game of one-v-one against the midfield maestro who lives next door.

At least there was Sven to look forward to at half-time, a chance to hear some really in-depth analysis from a man who has been there and done it.

Headphones were inserted and at least one could hear.

The key incident of the first half - the sending off of Robert Green and subsequent missed penalty by Andriy Shevchenko - was replayed for Eriksson to provide his expert opinion.

"Well... I think it was a bad penalty," said Eriksson. Yes Sven, it wasn't on target. And the quality of the insight didn't improve much after that.

Watching the second half was a chore rather than a pleasure.

It was impossible to assess how well individual players had performed, simply because it was so difficult to distinguish between them, aside from the 20 seconds when the action froze on the screen and one was able to tell Gerrard apart from Lampard and Carrick.

The lesson of the experiment is surely that we are not ready for this.

Next time, if indeed there is a next time, the £4.99 will stay in my pocket and the only football action in this household will be Dad v Lad.