Southgate: I’m so proud of this team

20 minutes from the World Cup Final, so for the players to lift themselves for this game was very difficult.

“Physically and emotionally, to go to the wire in the semi-final was an incredible experience for everybody.

“That’s on the back of a quarterfinal and a second round game that went to the death as well.

“You are so close to the biggest possible prize and after losing everyone wanted to go home.

“But we wanted to try and get a medal today.

“The players and staff were keen to finish on a positive note.

“But no recriminations – the effort was there.

“The quality of play at times was there up to a point, but quite simply we’ve played a better team.

“We have played a team who are far ahead of us in terms of their development as a group and are probably Belgium’s best-ever team.

“We’re not at that stage just yet.”

Meunier fired Belgium into a fourth-minute lead as England struggled in the first half.

But the Three Lions bit back after the break.

Eric Dier (below) had a shot cleared off the line by Toby Alderweireld before Hazard scored a killer second goal 10 minutes from time.

The England boss feels, however, that progress has been made.

And that his team can look to the future with an optimism that didn’t feel possible when he inherited a squad still trying to come to terms with Euro 2016 humiliation and Sam Allardyce’s brief and ill-fated reign as manager. Southgate (above) said: “I think it’s important to tell the team how proud I am – we had not won a knockout game at the World Cup for 12 years. “But we recognise where we are and we were reminded of that today. “We haven’t hidden in terms of our progress. They will have learned a lot in both victory and defeat. “Now we have to look to the future. We have some big fixtures in the autumn, playing the likes of Spain, Switzerland and Croatia. “These are great opportunities for us to develop, improve, try things, look at players. “We have to try to constantly evolve and improve. “We’ve done that, particularly well over the last eight months and we’ve ended up having a brilliant adventure here. “I think we are very realistic about the level we are. We’ve had a lot of praise, which has been nice – but that has been balanced with a lot of reality. “We don’t kid ourselves at all. We know exactly the areas where we hope to get better. “We’re not in club football where we have a chequebook to buy new players. We have to coach and develop. “It’s nice to reach a semi-final because that builds belief and gives momentum to the team. “There’s now evidence that they can have success and they can feel that – and commit to the shirt.”