England manager Roy Hodgson believes the experience of playing in this year's European Championships will help his younger players should they qualify for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
Hodgson is set to name his squad for the upcoming two World Cup qualifying matches, against San Marino and Poland, next week.
He will be without at least one experienced player after former England captain John Terry quit international football in protest at his treatment by the Football Association ahead of receiving a four-match ban for racially abusing Anton Ferdinand.
The likes of Gary Cahill, Phil Jagielka and Joleon Lescott are all vying for places in central defence while, up front, several other players will be looking to put what they learned during Euro 2012 to good use as well.
"That tournament will stand the young players in good stead," Hodgson told FATV.
"We had a lot of young players with us who had virtually no international experience and came off the back of seasons where they hardly played.
"Andy Carroll did not play many games for Liverpool until the very end. Danny Welbeck had not played many games for Manchester United and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain hardly played for Arsenal.
"The younger ones will gain enormously from that tournament experience."
Hodgson, catapulted into the England job after Fabio Capello resigned in protest at the FA's decision to strip Terry of the captaincy, saw injuries to key players such as Wayne Rooney hamper the team's hopes at Euro 2012 where they lost on penalties to Italy in the quarter-finals.
"The loss of some key players did affect us (during Euro 2012)," said Hodgson.
"Experience and ability is what it is all about at the level we were playing at and I don't think we played anything like as well as I would like to think an England team can play.
"But on the other hand, I thought we showed a lot of other English qualities. The team spirit, the workrate, the determination, the desire to throw your body in the way of the ball to make certain the team got a result.
"Going into the Euros my major concern was making sure the environment was right, that the players felt comfortable and were happy to be there.
"I can be very happy with what we achieved in that respect but let's hope we can get to the next tournament and show we are an even better team than we were in the last one."
Source: AFP
