3 reasons why England's Under-21 team failed at the European Championship

#2 Individual mistakes cost England again

Fikayo Tomori's error cost England a key goal against Romania

It was a couple of individual mistakes – from John Stones and Ross Barkley – that cost England’s senior team in the UEFA Nations League finals earlier in June as they lost out to the Netherlands in the semi-finals, and equally, it was individual mistakes that cost the U21 team their chance of glory in this tournament, too.

England actually controlled their game against France well for the majority of the game, with goalkeeper Dean Henderson saving a contentious first-half penalty and Phil Foden scoring an excellent goal to put the Young Lions in the lead.

But Hamza Choudhury’s reckless challenge on Jonathan Bamba saw England reduced to 10 men, and despite defending well, they collapsed in the last minutes of the game, with Crystal Palace’s Aaron Wan-Bissaka eventually scoring a thoroughly avoidable own goal to hand France a 2-1 victory.

Against Romania meanwhile, England ended up losing 4-2, but in reality, they had the better of most of the match, and 3 of Romania’s 4 goals were also avoidable and all were caused by more individual errors. Jonjoe Kenny’s late tackle handed the Romanians a penalty, Fikayo Tomori’s weak clearance led directly to Ianis Hagi’s goal, and Florinel Coman’s first goal was caused by a Scott Carson-esque error from Henderson.

Conceding 6 goals in 2 games looks bad by anyone’s standards but when 4 of those goals were easily avoidable, things become a little more frustrating. Like their senior counterparts, England’s U21 players simply made fatal errors when they couldn’t afford to do so. Had they avoided them, the side may well still be in the tournament.