Roy Hodgson has refused to let Tuesday night’s defeat by Germany sour a year in which he led England to the World Cup Finals.
Per Mertesacker’s 39th-minute header gave Germany a 1-0 win at Wembley in the final international of 2013.
But the Three Lions booked their place at next summer’s showpiece in Brazil by going through their qualifying campaign unbeaten.
Match Details
England 0-1 Germany
Tuesday 19 November 2013
Wembley Stadium
And Hodgson decided to look at the bigger picture when assessing his side’s loss to the Germans and Friday’s defeat by Chile.
He said: "I’m disappointed. It’s not nice to lose, especially to lose a second game at home.
"I’m not disappointed with the effort the players put in and the work rate and their application. I don’t think there were stages of the game where we were being particularly outplayed and for long periods it was an even game.
"But where the Germans were better than us was in the quality of their passing and in their finishing. We knew corners were going to be a major problem for us because of Mertesacker and the other big guys they have in their team and we weren’t at our tallest tonight."
Hodgson continued: "It’s been a great year for The FA [and] it’s been a great year for me because we’ve qualified for the World Cup.
"We’ve used these two very tough friendly matches to look at a lot of players. I’m not prepared to accept for one minute that that’s going to take the shine off what has been a very good year and a year in which we have achieved our goal and we’ve got an awful lot to look forward to.
"A lot of players are going to fiercely try and contest their place in the squad and I am looking forward to that."
The England boss fielded 25 players over the last two games as he continues to assess his stock ahead of next year’s finals – and he said there are a number of other players who are still in his thoughts.
The matches against Chile and Germany allowed Hodgson the opportunity to blood some younger players – and against the South Americans he handed debuts to Fraser Forster, Adam Lallana and Jay Rodriguez – and he believes he can take a lot from the final games of the year.
He added: "Seven players who could feature in my first-class line-up weren’t even in the 26-man squad so I think there’s a lot of players to be assessed before we start saying this is a first-class line-up.
"So I’m not prepared to say that this was necessarily our first-choice line-up. It was a good line-up, but it wasn’t good enough to win the game.
Hodgson continued: "We’ll see how many of these players play in the German team come Brazil.
"They do have a strong squad of players – four of those players that started the game play for Borussia Dortmund and they played in the Champions League Final last year so I think it would be unfair to suggest that was a weak German team.
"I thought it was a strong German team. I thought the teams were equally matched. They had players missing, we had players missing, Jogi [Loew] wanted to do some experimentation with players, I wanted to do some experimentation with players. I certainly learned a lot from the game."
And on the same day that Gareth Southgate’s Under-21s beat San Marino 9-0, Hodgson also pointed to the number of young players that could be breaking into the senior squad in the future.
He concluded: "We do have a few young players – [Daniel] Sturridge, [Danny] Welbeck, [Jack] Wilshere and [Ross] Barkley - we have a very good Under-21 team and so the fact we’ve been beaten by Germany doesn’t mean to say there are no good youngsters in the country.
"We are hoping that in the future we will be able to produce more players who have come through our academy system into our Premier League teams and hence into the national team."
