Defending champion Germany booked its place at next year’s World Cup and stayed perfect in qualifying by beating Northern Ireland 3-1 on Thursday.

Sebastian Rudy and Sandro Wagner scored in the first half and Joshua Kimmich wrapped it up late as Germany made it nine wins from nine games to be certain of finishing top in Europe Group C.

Josh Magennis claimed the home side’s consolation after a corner in injury time.

Germany moved eight points clear of Northern Ireland, which was already assured of at least second place, with just one round of games remaining.

Group winners qualify automatically for the finals in Russia, while the top eight runners-up from nine groups go on to playoffs to decide the other four places allocated to Europe.

Already out of contention, the Czech Republic defeated Azerbaijan 2-1 in Baku to move to third, and Mohamed ‘Moi’

Elyounoussi scored a hat trick in Norway’s 8-0 rout of San Marino.’

Before Harry Kane finally broke the tedium with a late goal, the extent of the excitement at Wembley Stadium on Thursday was fans ripping out pages of the program, folding them into paper airplanes and launching them on the pitch.

A 1-0 victory over Slovenia ensured England can now at least now be sure of boarding a plane for the World Cup in Russia next year. On the basis of the showing against Slovenia, though, pessimistic pundits are saying England might not be staying long at the World Cup.

‘Was it the performance we wanted and the night we wanted? No, absolutely not,’ England manager Gareth Southgate said.

The downbeat tone was set earlier in the day when Football Association chief executive Martin Glenn told industry executives at a conference: ‘England players do not travel well.’

Since missing out on the 2008 European Championship, securing places at tournaments has been easy going for the

English who are now unbeaten in 38 qualifiers. The problem is once England qualifies for major tournaments and its limited capacity to threaten not only football's aristocracy but the mid-ranking teams as well.

Since winning the 1966 World Cup on home soil, England has only won six games in the knockout stages at major tournaments. The last success was against Ecuador at the 2006 World Cup, and England couldn't even overcome tournament newcomer Iceland in the last 16 at the 2016 European Championship.

Glenn blames the cycle of collapses on the ‘psychological edge’ missing in England teams.

‘We know there is a brittleness in unfamiliar circumstances that we have to deal with,’ Glenn told the Leaders conference at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge home.

What Glenn saw later at Wembley was that, even in the familiar confines of English football's HQ, the team fares little better.

It was a dreary, penultimate qualifier in Group F made even more desolate by 30,000 of the 90,000 seats being unoccupied and those who did show up demonstrating their boredom with the paper planes. In part the low crowd was a reflection of the apathy of England fans, but ticket sales were also affected by the expectation of a London Underground strike that was only called off this week.

‘We have to show resilience whatever the atmosphere,’ Southgate said, ‘and whatever the feeling.’ Southgate played up the magnitude of earning a place well before December's World Cup draw, contrasting his team's feat with the struggle to Russia being endured by other leading teams. European champion Portugal, Euro 2016 semifinalist Wales, Italy and the Netherlands are out of the automatic qualification places.