Get to a certain age in this game and you write the same story, just with different names. England go to a tournament, England get outplayed by every good team they meet, England dig in and lose on penalties, and now it’s all about youth.

I can’t wait for Friends tonight. I wonder if Ross and Rachel get back together. And what about that new rapper Eminem? Sounds really  different. Got the preaching style of Tupac, but he's a white kid from Detroit. We’ll be hearing more of him, definitely.

I'm sorry, I must have opened a portal to the past. It is 1994 again, or 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010. Perm any one from plenty. England lose, bring on the kids. Why send a man to do a man’s job when you can recruit a bunch of 21-year-olds and ruin them instead?

Missing man: Phil Jones (right) was limited to the training ground at Euro 2012

If it was as easy as that, every failing nation would do it. First you must have the talent pool, then you must have the wit to use it. Jordan  Henderson is a promising kid yet did not look any more adept than Steven Gerrard or Scott Parker at handling Italy on Sunday, because it is very hard for two to play against three, particularly when the spare man is Andrea Pirlo. Henderson’s youth did not matter a damn.

Still, at least he got on. The  worrying yet strangely unspoken aspect of this tournament was: what happened to Phil Jones?

He went from being one of the outstanding players when England defeated Spain in a friendly last year — drawing comparisons with Franco Baresi from Fabio Capello, no less — to not playing a single minute of football under Roy Hodgson at Euro 2012. Nobody would argue for his installation as a centre half: John Terry and Joleon Lescott were two of England’s most consistently outstanding performers, and Glen Johnson at right back wasn’t the problem, either.

Yet as Italy took charge of the game in Kiev was it not crying out for a midfield player to sit on Pirlo? And who better than Jones, who played in forward midfield against Spain for 56 minutes, mainly to break up the play high before the passing carousel had time to gain momentum.

It was exactly what England needed to do against Pirlo. Instead, Henderson came on for Parker, like replaced like, England remained overwhelmed and the game drifted to a predictable conclusion.

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