Eni Aluko says lessons will be learned from England Women's defeat to Germany at Wembley Stadium.
In an historic meeting with the eight-time European Champions, Mark Sampson's side lost 3-0 courtesy of three clinical first-half strikes from the visitors.
And Chelsea forward Aluko, who bagged 13 goals as the Lionesses won ten out of ten in their qualifying campaign for next summer's World Cup, hopes they can one day emulate the Germans.
England 0-3 Germany
Women's International Match
Sunday 23 November 2014
Wembley Stadium connected by EE
"We played the best team in the world and that's the benchmark," said Aluko.
"When you play the benchmark side you've got to take as many lessons from that as possible and be humble about it and say, 'where could we have been better as players collectively and individually?'.
"Next time hopefully when we play Germany we'll be able to rectify some of the mistakes we made."
And Aluko hopes that the experience of playing against the Germans in front of a record 45,619 crowd will help them as they build towards Canada 2015 in June.
"The purpose of this all is for us to go into a World Cup and compete. Hopefully there's more to come from this team," she said.
"The German players were very composed and knew what they were doing.
"We have a huge respect for Germany because for many years they've been doing what we aspire to do."
