The left side of England’s midfield looked like it was an Achilles’ heel for the national team, but with Joe Cole showing how effective he can be, and the emergence of Stuart Downing and now Kieran Richardson, there is no shortage of candidates for the position.

Smith has to fight for a place in the Manchester United forward line with Wayne Rooney, Ruud Van Nistelrooy and Louis Saha, and with England he is vying with Rooney, Michael Owen and Jermain Defoe among others.

But he played the full 90 minutes in the 2-1 defeat of the United States in Chicago on Saturday, and was delighted to see his young United team-mate Richardson give Sven another option on the left.

"You want competition for every position," said Smith. "England have wanted players who can play on the left for some time, and now we have a few who can do it. It’s good news for us."

Richardson has had limited opportunities at Old Trafford, but his loan spell at West Bromwich Albion for the second half of the season worked wonders for him and the club.

Smith said: "Kieran has done brilliantly since going on loan to West Brom. He settled in really well there and showed what a good player he is.

"Hopefully he can now come back to Manchester United and show everybody what he can do for us. I think he is ready to step up a level.

"He really benefitted from the experience of playing every week for West Brom, and of course we have strength in depth at United, with real competition for places. So we will have to wait and see what happens."

Smith is one of the more experienced players in a young England squad in America, and knows they are all trying to put themselves at the forefront of Sven’s thinking. "Anybody who is here on this trip has a chance to impress," he said.

"We all know that it will be what you do for your club over the course of a season that will determine whether you go to the World Cup, but every time you get a chance to impress you’ve got to make the most of it and show the right attitude.

"It was never going to be easy against the United States, who got to the quarter-finals of the last World Cup. We knew we would have to go out and work hard, but we did that and got what we deserved."