NO EXCUSES THIS TIME

“We've been talking about this tournament and England doing well at it for about six years now, saying this group of players will reach their peak in 2006,” said Neville. “So wherever we get this time is the measure of this team.

“Don't get me wrong. We could win it in 2010, but that would probably be a different group of players. It would have a different backbone to it. This for me is the peak for this team, my generation, so there really can be no excuses for us this time — no bad decision, no missed penalty, no poor performance. These are things you have to cope with.”

“We underachieved in 2004,” he added. “We didn't show enough authority against Portugal, when we should have seen the game out at 1-0. In 1998 we underachieved. Again you hear the excuses, ‘Oh, we had Becks sent off', but you have to cope with bad decisions or missing a penalty. You shouldn't be putting yourself in those positions. We'd lost to Romania in the group stages, which meant we had to play Argentina in the next round, so we shot ourselves in the foot. You have to take the opportunities when they come along and in the make-or-break moments in a tournament, you have to make your own. If we don't, we'll come home and we'll be a nearly team, simple as that.”