NO MESSING ... Rio Ferdinand gives his honest assessment of England

RIO FERDINAND believes England missed a golden opportunity to properly blood two of their future stars at Euro 2012.

The Manchester United defender was completely baffled that his versatile 20-year-old club-mate Phil Jones did not get a kick in the tournament.

And he was scratching his head too when Arsenal’s 18-year-old Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, having started in the opening Group D game against France, was barely seen again.

Ferdinand said: “If you take the youngsters to a competition like this, you should get them out there and see what they are made of.

“I am a fan of The Ox and I wanted to see more of him but in the end he finished up as a spectator.

“He was almost in the same position Theo Walcott was when he was picked for the 2006 World Cup.

“Phil Jones is one of the most adaptable players we have in our country and where was he?

“When we need to take the ball from midfield, run 40 yards with it and put the other team on the back foot, he is the man for the job.

“Instead, we stayed cautious and Jordan Henderson was used instead.

“That’s not a criticism of Jordan, he is a different player to Phil, but I thought it showed we were being too conservative.

“It sends a message to the opponents that you are more interested in defending and playing on the counter-attack than making them scared of you.

“The other thing is that Phil was in the squad before Jordan, who was a stand-by player.

“I’m reading a lot of stuff about how it’s time to get the youngsters in and all of that but you only find out if they can do it when you throw them in there.

“What did we learn about Alex and Phil at this tournament?

“Do we know how much influence Alex can have on a game in a finals?

“He did fairly well against France, so why not persist with him and let him grow into it?

“As for Phil, we will now have to wait until the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, provided we qualify, to see how good he can be at the highest level. Expectations were low so the manager had a free shot to find out about our youngsters and I feel it was a missed opportunity.”

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