Why aftermath of England’s loss to the Netherlands was the most valuable part of their Nations League campaign

For Gareth Southgate, the real pride had more to do with the defeat than the victory. England had secured third place at the Nations League, entitling them to bronze medals, but for Southgate there was far more to it than that.

Beating Switzerland 6-5 on penalty kicks is fine, of course, but ultimately Southgate is trying to take England to another level, where winning is the standard and only the final rounds of any competition are where England want to be. What Southgate wants, in short, is a winning mentality. And that is why he was so pleased with what he saw in Portugal.

Because England knew that they only had themselves to blame for their defeat to Holland on Thursday night, and they knew that had they not made so many "ridiculous mistakes" then they may have been playing in the final in Porto on Sunday night. That hurt, and it was meant to, because Southgate wants this team to want to keep getting better.

And so that feeling in the aftermath of Thursday evening was, for Southgate, the most valuable part of the whole trip. Without it, this would have been just another England team who were happy to be here, pleased to have made it through to the final four but not ultimately banking too much on achieving anything. Which is not how Southgate wants it to be.

“For me, the significant step is the level of disappointment that we leave here with, having not got to the final and [not] winning the trophy," Southgate said. "That took some lifting in the last couple of days for everybody. None of us was satisfied."

England's game against Switzerland was not a classic - these games never are - but what Southgate did take pride from the response of the players. The way that they harnessed their frustration at coming all this way, beating Spain and Portugal to get to these finals, only to gift the game to the Dutch with some childishly careless errors in possession. If England had been less upset with Thursday, that is when Southgate would have started to worry.

"We played fine on Thursday but made ridiculous mistakes," Southgate said. "It was important we responded with a high level of performance. The players adapted and changed the shape, and played well. We should have won the game with the opportunities we created. It was a good response. We had some really good discussions in the last couple of days at our dissatisfaction at only getting as far as we did, and a recognition we don't get may opportunities as an international team. We have to strive to take them over the next couple of years.”

That is the key point with any international team. Cycles of development are brief and teams only get so many shots at winning something. England have now been to and lost two semi-finals. That is a huge achievement in the context of England teams from 1996 to 2018 but now the mentality is focused on winning, they have to find a way to take a chance. They only have one year until Euro 2020, they have to keep improving and hope that, if they do get to a third semi, they will be able to deliver this time. Because they will not keep getting opportunities forever.

"What underlined everything was the desire for the players to respond," Southgate said. "None of us was satisfied with two semi-finals. We all wanted to move forward further. We've hit a certain level, but it's not a level we're satisfied with. We have to go again.