Euronly official After Hours soccerball thread

It's rare that I don't feel an sense of frustration or simmering anger after we lose a big game, but there wouldn't be much point after today.

We played extremely well in the first half: withstood the pressure, and they looked a bit frayed at the edges by the end of the of it. Another goal could have really finished them off, but it was hard to shake the feeling that, all of our good play duly noted, that we could find goal number two hard to come by.

All the advantages that France had in their favour worked a charm for them in the second half: more rest, more quality, home support and options to change it up. We were never realistically going to withstand all that pressure, but it was a pity that the winning goal was handed to them a bit cheaply. And some the players were dead on their feet after that. I can't really complain too much - France were really good in the second half and we had fought valiantly until we had nothing left. No complaints.

I felt very proud of the boys. People might scoff that it's small beans to get to a 24 team euros, but you still have to get there. The qualifying campaign was full of memorable moments - Last minute winner in Georgia; fantastic results against Germany; coming back from the dead to salvage something at home to Poland; doing the business against Bosnia - and that was just getting there. Once we were there we were unlucky not to get the result against Sweden. Sure, Belgium was a real sobering experience, but that made Italy all the sweeter. That was a magic result and a few days of magical thinking followed.We never had any of that whatsoever during 2012, too bad it couldn't continue forever.

A big thanks to team. It was great.

Good game so far