Michael Owen felt England missed the presence of Manchester United icon Paul Scholes for defeat to Italy. Owen, a free agent after leaving Manchester United this summer, took to Twitter after the game to lament the absence of his former Old Trafford team-mate Scholes.

He wrote: "Pirlo was awesome but we have a player of a similar age and equally as good. Unfortunately he wasn't there. #Scholes.

"Easy for people to say 'until we keep possession better we will never win anything'. We are not as good as others at doing that.

"We played to our strengths but are just not quite good enough. We were hoping to 'do a Chelsea'. If you are not the best team then you have to find an alternative way to win. The other option is to forget results for a while and start from scratch playing a different style.

"Doubt we have the type of players to do that though. Answer has to be to start coaching our youngsters a different brand of football."