The Lionesses can hold their heads up high irrespective of the semi-final exit

Phil Neville is not a fan of the cameras infiltrating his post-match huddle with his England players. Here, though, the lens was just close enough to pick up a crucial part-sentence.

“I am the proudest man...,” he said before the view was obscured. His is a pride that will be mirrored across his nation this morning. Three weeks in France have engaged a significant chunk of the football public back home and it is not hard to imagine that posters of Bronze, Parris and White may jostle for position alongside those of Sterling and Kane on girls’ bedroom walls next season. If that is to be so than this has been a mission accomplished in some important ways.

Nevertheless, failure still feels like a failure in elite sport and as Steph Houghton and Lucy Bronze fought back tears during Neville’s address to them it was doubtless because they knew England had just let a rare opportunity slip away.

This was a game that could have been settled early. America – without doubt, the best team in the world – were vastly superior in the first half. Even without the influential Megan Rapinoe – absent injured – they were too smart, too slick and too sharp for an England side that was hanging on a little from the very first moments.

Had USA added to a lovely early goal from Christen Press, they probably would have rolled England over. But football will inevitably punish teams that do not capitalise on superiority and here, deep into a game that Neville’s team had not at any point been in control of, they were presented with the chance to do something quite unexpected.

VAR did not help them and then did help them. Ellen White was perhaps an inch offside as she ran through to beat Alyssa Naeher in the USA goal. It was the correct decision to overturn the goal but it remains the case that the offside rule in its entirety needs to be re-examined. Currently, it is not a rule that is helping the game.

As for the late penalty awarded to England, goodness me. It was never a penalty, no matter how many times it is looked at and from how many angles. It was an abysmal decision from the Brazilian referee but nevertheless, it provided England with the chance to make extra time. At that point, with both teams debilitated by the cloying heat, all bets would have been off. It would have been anybody’s game. But when the moment came, England did not rise to it. For all the good things they have done in France, penalties are not on England’s list. They had missed two out of three before this game and so here it was Houghton who took the kick rather than the usual kicker, Nikita Parris.

Maybe Houghton, as captain, felt she should step up, figuratively and literally. If so, it was commendable. But defenders taking penalties never looks right – unless they are specialists – and here Houghton’s kick was weak. Naeher saved it comfortably and with that England’s race was run.

So what do we take from this journey through what we hope will one day be viewed as a breakthrough World Cup? The truth of England’s achievements is that they return home with a par score. Perfectly creditable but, if we are objective, no better than was expected.

This was a tournament with significant discrepancies between teams and it could be argued that as soon as they played a good one, England lost. However, that would be to ignore the convincing and enterprising football England played during early victories. It is there – and in the new, attractive style played under Neville that we can find the real worth of this side. Neville has undoubtedly moved England forwards, just not— as we maybe feared all along – far enough to win a World Cup.

Away from that, this has been an instructive tournament for many of us. We can stop talking now about smaller goals and smaller pitches for the women. It has been a worthy debate but the evidence of this tournament suggests that we are best to leave well alone.

Comparisons with the men’s game are pointless also. Helped by the fact it has been shown live on free to air TV, women’s football at the elite level has revealed itself to a new audience. Some will stay, some will drift away and those that never wanted to look in the first place can now turn their television back on and wait for the Premier League to start.

But as September arrives and with it the start of the Women’s Super League, we will know the names and the faces of footballers previously unknown to many and if that serves to irritate some then they really don’t understand the sport and what it is supposed to be about.

Nevertheless, there will be no open top bus ride for Neville and his players. Not this time. If we want real World Cup glory this summer it will have to arrive on the cricket field.