England switch off as the French come alive

France got out of jail through one moment of sheer brilliance from Zinedine Zidane and one of carelessness from Steven Gerrard that brought a remarkable climax to last night's European Championship clash.

England snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and that will rankle. They had put themselves in a position to win the game by dint of sheer hard work and a well-thought-out and perfectly implemented tactical gameplan.

If the match hadn't conjured the ending it did, the English would now be celebrating a notable coup over the world's best team. They frustrated the French for long periods with what amounted to a 4-5-1 formation with Wayne Rooney playing in the hole behind Michael Owen.

The French defenders found it very difficult to pick up the young Everton striker and he had an outstanding match. It's occasionally hard to believe that he's still a teenager, given the maturity and footballing nous he displays on the pitch.

He ran aggressively, rarely gave the French defence time to settle and demonstrated the vision to bring other players into the play. He tempted Mikael Silvestre into the rash lunge for the England penalty and the Manchester United man was lucky that the colour of the card he saw was yellow and not red.

If France had been reduced to 10 men or Beckham had scored from the spot kick, then I believe England would have held on. Beckham struck a reasonable penalty but Fabien Barthez guessed right - he's probably faced a 100 or more when they were team-mates at United - and made a good stop. I'd probably recognise the save rather than castigating Beckham's strike.

The game obviously changed on Zidane's free kick. It was a wonderful effort and in those circumstances you can do nothing but applaud his technical excellence and confidence.

At 1-1 England should have regrouped, determined that while they'd lost the opportunity of a famous win they were going to emerge from the game with a draw.

Unfortunately from their perspective they switched off. Gerrard's back pass was ill-judged and Thierry Henry, who had been reasonably quiet all night, showed his pace to get the touch ahead of David James. Zidane's spot kick couldn't have been better.

While this will hurt England, I believe they will recover and show the mental steel to make the play-offs. The game between Croatia and Switzerland earlier in the day was one of the poorest I have seen at this level for many years.

England should be good enough to win both those matches.

Sven-Goran Eriksson will take at least two positives from the night - Rooney's performance and also that of fledgling defender Ledley King. The Spurs man enjoyed a fine game. He was strong in the tackle and showed good concentration in what was a good overall team performance.

Against a high-quality side like France there are going to be long periods when you're going to be chasing and closing down and England managed this, primarily through dropping deep and making themselves difficult to play through.

You have to admire the way the French continued to push in the second half and maintained a largely relentless pressure. It made for a difficult evening for Owen in that he barely got a pass worthy of the name. I wouldn't be critical of his contribution quite simply because he never received any sort of service.

Eriksson will reflect on the fact that for 88 minutes England's tactics were sound and had taken them to the threshold of a brilliant win. Henry, David Trezeguet and Zidane had all been kept reasonably quiet, but the sign of truly great teams is their ability to win even when they are not playing at their peak.

That is what France managed in Portugal last night. It made for a thrilling finish to an entertaining contest. France are now poised to qualify comfortably while England should also join them in the play-offs, stronger mentally for last night's setback.