Michael Owen (on Twitter): "Pirlo was awesome but we have a player of a similar age and equally as good. Unfortunately he wasn't there. #Scholes.
"Easy for people to say 'until we keep possession better we will never win anything'. We are not as good as others at doing that.
"We played to our strengths but are just not quite good enough. We were hoping to 'do a Chelsea'. If you are not the best team then you have to find an alternative way to win. The other option is to forget results for a while and start from scratch playing a different style.
"Doubt we have the type of players to do that though. Answer has to be to start coaching our youngsters a different brand of football."
Rio Ferdinand tweeted: "Wow, out on penalties again. Gutted for the lads man.
"On a pure footballing note Pirlo just put on a pure footballing master class + the penalty was too much".
Joey Barton: "What is it with us and penalties? Saved us from the embarrassment of a pasting off Germany in the next round.
"Even the most biased Englishmen has to admit that Italy were much the better team over 120mins... #sadbuttrue".
Former England manager Graham Taylor: "If we'd won, we'd all be excited and we'd all be saying things but in the back of our minds would be the 120 minutes where we were the second best team.
"You know as well as I do that tournament football is all about winning, and if we'd won the shoot-out I would be as excited as the next man.
"But in Andrea Pirlo you've mentioned a player there who had the freedom of the pitch. This is difficult, but it's one of the things I learned from my time and that is that we were never going to win anything playing 4-4-2.
"You can't allow yourself to be outnumbered in the middle of the pitch because they play through the team and yesterday Pirlo had the freedom of the pitch, so I think from a tactical point of view that was a mistake."
Harry Redknapp: "It would have been an injustice if we'd won.
"They had twice as many touches as us.
"Roy Hodgson did the best he could with that squad.
"The players couldn't have given any more. I'm naturally sad that we didn't go through and I was shocked by how good Italy were.
"What this could do is provide a lesson for everyone about how to be a force at international level.
"With Andrea Pirlo in there it was extremely tough for our boys to make an impact.
"From the starting XI, (Danny) Welbeck was the only young player on show.
"Other than that it was a pretty experienced side, which is no surprise. The match showed that the way forward points to a man like Jack Wilshere.
"His absence was keenly felt because he can be like Italy's Pirlo and can certainly dictate play the way Italy's experienced man did.
"Not having the young Arsenal playmaker available shows how much value he could be to England.
"Gerrard was still our best player at Euro 2012.
"John Terry was magnificent. We still need those players as now there is World Cup qualification for Brazil in 2014 to think about.
"We need to bring through a few youngsters, the likes of Wilshere I've already mentioned.
"But while we are doing so, players like Gerrard and Terry and others will be of vital importance."
Source: FOOTYMAD
