Grand old man Italy too cute for England’s young upstarts

England 1 Italy 2

In the steaming heat of Manaus, there were positives for England - in the zestful performance of Raheem Sterling, for example, and the spirited manner in which the team had responded to Italy taking the lead but, in the end, it was the Azzurri who took the key chances, Mario Ballotelli confirming that if you’re going to do one truly useful thing in a game, then make it the winning goal.

“A very disappointing result,” said England manager Roy Hodgson afterwards. “It’s never easy to take positives when you lose but my gut feeling is we did many good things and had good individual performances. But we conceded that second goal and, however hard we tried, we couldn’t produce the quality shot or cross we needed. The players gave it their all. We’ve got to lift out heads now and prepare for the next two games. If they reproduce that performance twice more, they’ve a good chance of getting a result.”