Neville: We spent six months on spot-kicks

Phil Neville said captain Steph Houghton took the ill-fated penalty during England’s exit against the United States because “she was the best penalty-taker on the pitch”.

After Nikita Parris had missed her last two penalties, Houghton stepped up to take the 82nd-minute spot-kick when Ellen White was fouled by Becky Sauerbrunn. Her poorly disguised effort was kept out easily by Alyssa Naeher.

Neville denied this was a case of an unprepared centre-half stepping up under pressure, instead saying: “We obviously couldn’t speak about this before the game, but for six months now we’ve probably gone into the most in-depth practice-and-analysis process that any team’s gone into – and we’ve missed three penalties at the World Cup.

“But there is a process that we’ve been through in terms of penaltyscoring in training, success rates. Nikita was obviously our No1 penalty-taker and then she missed two.

“We spoke to Nikita and we spoke to the team. We agreed that the next-best penalty-taker on the team would take the penalty. That, through what we’ve done over the last six months, was Steph.”

England’s second successive World Cup semi-final exit after their defeat by Japan following a Laura Bassett own goal at Canada 2015 has re-routed them to a thirdplace play-off in Nice against either Sweden or Holland.

Neville was jovial after the game, but admitted his players’ pain reduced his words at this point to “white noise”. “I’ve no words that will help this sink in and make them feel better,” he said.

“But elite sport means three days later, we’ve got to go again. I’ve had the best 18 months of my career. They’ve given me something my career has never given me.”