England boss Gareth Southgate believes his side learnt another important lesson in their development, after their extra-time defeat against the Netherlands.
The Three Lions had been ahead after Marcus Rashford’s first-half penalty only for a Matthijs de Ligt header to bring it level in the UEFA Nations League semi-final.
But after seeing a late Jesse Lingard goal ruled out for offside via VAR and then heading into extra time, the last two goals for the Dutch were more than avoidable with England being caught in possession twice.
"It was an incredible evening really, for a start,” said Southgate.
"I think we've learned a lot from playing against a top team who posed us a lot of problems which we haven't faced in the past.
"We got to grips with those throughout the game, but the obvious thing is that we've conceded some really poor goals.
"At any level, you can't concede the type of goals that we conceded, but we also had a couple of really good chances to score and it would've been different had we taken those chances
"It's hard to put it in complete context at the minute because there's so much going through your head.
“After 80-odd minutes, we thought we’d scored to put us through into the final.
"But the manner of that [Lingard] goal being disallowed and the manner of the second goal we conceded really deflated the team at a time when the energy was low.
"The last one was an element of fatigue as Ross [Barkley] had been down with cramp just before and when you're fatigued, errors happen.
"But it’s not a case of stopping what we're doing, they're passes which we can make absolutely no problem, but it wasn't just the two goals, we weren’t as sharp as usual.”
England will now go into Sunday’s third place game against Switzerland wanting to finish on a high, and Southgate is aiming to make sure his squad will be ready to go again.
“Tonight is an important game for the group of us to reflect on,” he added.
"The next few days will be painful, because to get this far and lose with so many supporters is disappointing but we have to dig in and we'll be stronger for the experience.
"When we look to next summer [EURO 2020] and the top teams we’ll have to beat, these are the games we have to go through and learn from.
"As a manager, you've got to lead the players through these periods, dust them down and make sure we give a good account of ourselves on Sunday.”
