England's soggy display against Norway proved a turn-off to television viewers with audience figures showing almost 4million more people chose to watch the Great British Bake-Off than Roy Hodgson's men labour to a 1-0 victory.
The TV audience for England's game at Wembley, which itself was less than half-full, was 4.5million on ITV, peaking at 5.5million, while GBBO's audience on BBC1 was 8.3million reaching a peak of 9.1million.
The Football Association has accepted that it has work to do to regain supporters' trust after the disappointment of the World Cup, and has arranged high-profile friendlies against world champions Germany, Spain, Italy and France over the next two years to try to drum up interest, especially with a fairly hum-drum Euro 2016 qualifying group.
Football Association general secretary Alex Horne said last week: "We have got some work to do, we have to rebuild a squad which is Roy Hodgson's department, and we have got to rebuild some trust with the supporters."
England v Norway: Five things we learnt
England played Norway with the top tier closed due to low ticket sales - a record low for an England game at the new Wembley but the attendance of 40,181 was slightly better than the FA had been fearing.
The FA says it will be the best part of a decade before it can consider taking England games to other stadiums around the country as it needs the income from Wembley to pay off the stadium's debt.
