"But the reality is, would we have beaten Spain in the last World Cup? No, because they were better than England." With 85 appearances to his name, Neville is England's most-capped right-back, but has described his time playing for his country as "a wasted opportunity".

Only once during his career did England progress beyond the last eight -- the Euro '96 semi-final when they again lost to Germany -- and then Neville was not involved in that game. "I loved playing for England, but we've fallen short and I've contributed to that over the last 10 years as much as anyone," he said. The analogy I use is, if a man takes a woman out 85 times and then she's not your girlfriend at the end of it, you've wasted a lot of time. You measure success by achieving things.

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"We got to the quarter-finals, but that's falling short because we were not getting to European Championship and World Cup finals. Over the last 10 or 15 years, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and Brazil have all been better than England. "We need more players of higher quality who can keep the ball."