Aidy Boothroyd: U19 defeat will be a good lesson for excellent England

"Obviously we're very disappointed, we think that's as well as we've played in the tournament so far," Boothroyd said after the 2-1 defeat. "When you work with development teams, it's very easy to focus on just results but some of the performances today I thought were excellent.

"But it's goals that win games and goals that change games and unfortunately we lost to a very organised and very strong Italian team.

"I hope and believe today will be a really good lesson for our players because of the hurt that losing a semi-final is and also because it's a situation that we can really learn a lot from.”

An impressive England squad beat France, Netherlands and Croatia on their way to the last four, and Boothroyd thinks that his players will have grown with the experience.

"There are lots of things that we can take out of the tournament, lots of things we can learn from our opponents and lots of things we can learn about ourselves.

"To reach a semi-final in Germany with some of the teams that are in the competition is an achievement and we've qualified for a World Cup.

"But we've got to use this to see if we can do even better in next year's World Cup - that's our plan."

England have qualified for next summer’s U20 World Cup, but the manager is hoping that his players can get some regular first-team football in the intervening season.

“We'd like to see all of our players getting regular first-team football, but when they're at the really big clubs, there's some very good players to get past," Boothroyd said.

"Given time and support, I think they could make the first teams of their clubs and games like this, coming away with England, will add to them and make them better players to hopefully challenge for those places."