Martin Keown put it this way: 'Romania gave us a big examination and we we just weren't able to answer all the questions.'

What he might as well have said was that England looked like kids ready to tackle their 11-plus only to find a university degree paper shoved in front of them.

You had to hand it to him, though. While most of his other crestfallen mates scuttled off heads down to the sanctuary of the team bus, the Arsenal man stood and faced the discordant music as his interrogators demanded to know in the gentlest possible way what positives England could take away from their wretchedly undistinguished exit from Euro 2000.

'Well, I thought we showed tremendous spirit in the games we played in,' he offered.

Bless him. On the night, Keown had been the epitome of that quality of never-say-die determination which is supposed to define English football but the look on his face told you that he knew better than anyone that no amount of bulldog yeomanry can compete against footballing skill, craft and artistry.

'Hopefully, everyone will learn from this and English football will go on to better things,' he continued and his listeners nodded dutifully, having heard it all before.

For this was a night when the gap between the hype and hoopla of English football and the reality of our second division position in the world game was once again exposed as a chasm. Nothing changes. Throw in the hooligans and we've all been living Groundhog Day.

Forget that England were only five minutes away from reaching the quarter-finals.

In truth, they seemed light years away. It would have been an absolute travesty to watch in the last eight a team which got unstitched by Portugal, which just about prevailed in the battle of the dinosaurs with Germany and which was utterly bamboozled by an unsung Romanian outfit bereft of its star player, Gheorghe Hagi, for 90 minutes and its most influential defender, Gica Popescu, for an hour.

If, anything, on this evidence, the chasm is only widening. Look at any of the four groups in these championships and ask yourself if England would have been in the top two.

If it wasn't for the presence of the most inept German team in living memory and the under-achieving Swedes, it's arguable that we have been the poorest team on view here. Thank God we didn't draw Slovenia.

It is not just down to Kevin Keegan's lack of tactical nous and flexibility, though like a rabbit caught in the headlights, the England coach has appeared to have been blinded and lost every time he has been called upon to address the midfield deficiencies, a simple numbers game, which have so obviously rendered his team impotent during all the games.

It is also about having players who, week in week out, are lauded in the Premiership as being superstars but who, at the highest level, are so often revealed to be out of their depth.

Watching Gary Neville last night was marginally more painful to behold than watching his hapless brother, Phil. Gary's passing was shocking, his positioning hopeless and, by the end, as he retreated at barely a trot over the halfway line towards the gap he had vacated at the back as the Romanians poured through it unattended, he looked spent and clueless.

Maybe, Hagi offered generously, the England players were tired because 'your season is too long'. That, however, does not explain the gulf in the quality of the technical ability displayed by a bunch of supposed Romanian has-beens and our multi-millionaire Premiership darlings.

It's not David Beckham's fault that he is constantly lionised as the second best player in the world when, in reality, he is simply a fine player with a right boot to die for. Last night, an outstanding 19-year-old kid, Cristian Chivu, hardly gave him a kick.

We rave about our young talent but a lad with about the same international experience as Steven Gerrard, Adrian Mutu, was asked to take over Hagi's role as Romania's heartbeat and proceeded to fill in so seamlessly that he eclipsed his England counterpart, Paul Scholes.

Keegan lambasted Alan Shearer's critics on Saturday because he scored, yet no amount of Kev bluster could conceal that, on his final appearance for the country he has served so admirably, the captain's one notable contribution apart from his penalty conversion was a long-overdue booking for a dive.

He was vastly less threatening than a bloke deemed not good enough to hold down a place at Coventry City, Viorel Moldovan.

'I must take responsibility,' said Keegan. Yes, but so should so many of his players who had neither the gumption nor the footballing intelligence to take responsibility for change out there when the tide was rolling over them.