It will take a while for me and all England fans to get over this.
To be so close to winning this trophy, only to be defeated in the second successive Euro final, is a huge disappointment.
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Especially when it truly felt like this was our time.
It seemed like everything was falling into place for us to end the long wait for an important title.
But Spain deserved it. They were the best team in the final and the best team in the tournament.
All of us – fans, players, coaches, the FA – will have to move on and move on.
Because English football is still in a good position.
Gareth Southgate has taken us to two finals, a semi-final and a quarter-final in four tournaments. We have never produced a race like this before.
The challenge now is to maintain this level of competitiveness and make England even better.
Southgate and his team have done a fantastic job of changing the entire environment and narrative around the national team.
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Whether Gareth continues or not, the wider culture he created must be preserved.
This tournament was the biggest test of this culture that the team had to go through.
They overcame the problems and made it all the way, only to fall at the final hurdle.
But there is every reason to believe we can compete at the 2026 World Cup and beyond.
We have a very good group of players, many of them young, who can continue to play and perform for England for years to come.
Jude Bellingham, Kobbie Mainoo, Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden and Cole Palmer – to name just five – have many more tournaments under their belts.
Half of the team was not at the last World Cup, but now has tournament experience.
On the other hand, there are players who missed this Euro and who will be desperate to get back into the game. Players like Marcus Rashford, Jack Grealish and James Maddison will feel they have something to prove.
Everyone wants to be in the England squad when they’re doing well. I stayed out of the squads.
The team can be successful in those two games when you’re not there, which makes it harder to get back there.
When the requirements you need to meet to get into the national team keep increasing, it helps drive standards.
This tournament will also be an inspiration for the next generations of players. Unfortunately there is no trophy boost to take this to a completely different level.
But England provided moments in Germany that will be repeated forever.
Bellingham’s overhead kick and Ollie Watkins’ semi-final winner will be recreated in playgrounds and cages across the country.
When I was a kid, the goal I tried to copy was David Beckham’s free kick against Greece in 2001 – even though I was left-footed!
You see a lot of kids in England wearing Ronaldo shirts, Messi shirts, Mbappé shirts, because football has never been so global. But I believe that the success of the national team still brings something more.
Seeing English players competing again in a major final will, I hope, bring a new level of inspiration and desire to players in my Arsenal U18 team and across the country.
Reaching another final should also be an incentive for English coaches.
These players come from academies and a system that has never been successful at international level.
We see players competing at the highest level, in a European Championship final, who have been coached by English coaches throughout their careers.
When you look at the teams challenging for the top of the Premier League, their heartbeat is English players.
At Manchester City, it’s John Stones, Kyle Walker, Foden. At Arsenal, Saka and Declan Rice.
It’s clear that the influence of foreign coaches in the Premier League is incredibly strong.
City manager Pep Guardiola changed the way we view football and his philosophy has spread throughout the academies.
But it is still English coaches who adopt the Pep philosophy and try to replicate it, whilst also adding their own ideas.
So I thank the coaches, the academies, the clubs and the FA for creating the system that produced this team.
What I would like to see now is for England to continue to develop, to become a team capable of consistently dominating opponents and giving English football a real identity.
Now we have players who are comfortable on the ball and very good technically.
The biggest disappointment of the tournament was that we didn’t see it as often as we would have liked. This leaves us with a ‘what if?’ feeling.
England must not lose that traditional mentality of finding a way to win even when you are not playing well – that never-say-die spirit that has helped us win the Euros more than once.
But the next step is to allow other qualities to shine, to give the players our system is creating the platform to showcase everything they can do.
The job for me and other coaches is to keep producing players who are comfortable on the ball and who understand how to perform under pressure at a high level.
English football is in a good place, but we need to keep going. Then we will finally cross the line.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
