England were left empty-handed on Sunday night as goals from Nico Williams and Mikel Oyarzabal saw La Roja claim a record-fourth European Championship.

But as the dust starts to settle on the defeat, Mail Sport’s Oliver Holt relives his strongest memories of Euro 2024 – from Cole Palmer’s baked beans to Jude Bellingham’s belligerence.

Best player

Rodri. Everyone knows how good he is, everyone knows that sides tend not to lose matches when he is in their starting XI and everyone knew that if he took the level of his performances for Manchester City into this tournament, then few could rival him. He did that.

Best England player

Bukayo Saka. England were about the collective in this tournament. The most common quality ascribed to them was resilience, not flair. But Saka combined both. He grew into the tournament and provided England’s best individual performance, against Switzerland in the quarter-final in Dusseldorf.

Saka scored a superb equaliser in that game and then banished the ghosts of his penalty miss in the final of Euro 2020 by scoring in the shootout victory over the Swiss. He was superb against the Dutch in Dortmund, too.

Best goal

Lamine Yamal’s curler in Spain’s semi-final against France was breathtaking and Jude Bellingham’s bicycle kick against Slovakia was stunning and impossibly dramatic but I’m going to champion Cole Palmer’s strike in the final. It was a lovely team goal, right from Palmer’s pass out to Saka on the right, Saka’s run and pass inside to Bellingham and the way Bellingham, even though he was falling backwards, managed to lay the ball back into Palmer’s path.

Palmer’s finish, the way he passed it into the net from the edge of the area, was simply sublime. In that moment, I thought England were going to win their first major tournament for 58 years. The feeling didn’t last long.

Best manager

Luis de la Fuente. He had very good players at his disposal but other countries — France and Portugal in particular — had deeper squads and were desperately disappointing.

De la Fuente managed the balance of his team perfectly and adapted superbly to the loss of Pedri for the rest of the tournament in the quarter-final defeat of Germany. His team then shrugged off the loss of its best player, Rodri, at the end of the first half against England. Their resilience spoke volumes for De la Fuente’s astute man-management.

Best farewell

Not Cristiano Ronaldo, who was allowed to turn a supremely talented Portugal side’s attempt to win the Euros into a rerun of Sunset Boulevard. And not, sadly, the brilliant Toni Kroos, who decorated his final game by kicking Pedri out of the tournament. My best farewell goes to Gareth Southgate.

No one knows for sure yet that he has taken charge of his last game as England manager, of course, but I think his instinct is probably that it is the right time to go. I think his time’s up, too. More for his sake than for England’s, who are desperate to keep him in charge for the World Cup in two years’ time.

I don’t blame them for that. In the four major tournaments before he took over, England reached the last 16, the quarter-finals, did not get beyond the group stage and the round of 16 again. In the four tournaments with Southgate at the helm, England have reached the semi-final, the final, the quarter-final and the final.

So even if the reflex in the aftermath of the defeat by Spain in Berlin is to blame it all on the manager, the reality is that Southgate has transformed England’s fortunes in the past eight years. He has proved himself a brilliant coach in the round. He has re-established England as a credible force in the European and world game and has brought the national team right to the brink of ending all those decades of hurt.

There is a rump of critics who, unable to separate their dislike for his decency and kindness from the facts of his achievements with England, will never give him credit for that record in major tournaments. It will be entirely understandable if he decides enough’s enough and returns to the club game to test himself there.

Best snub

Jude Bellingham. Who else? Bellingham was the only first-choice England player to go through the entire tournament without speaking to the English media at the team’s base in Blankenhain. 

He spoke to Spanish journalists in the mixed zone after the final in Berlin and then marched past the English press contingent further down the line. Needless to say, his deportment was appreciated by all.

Best pundit

Well, it wasn’t Gary Lineker. The BBC’s lead presenter does not make many professional misjudgments but he got things horribly wrong in Germany. After an insipid and uninspiring England display against Denmark in the group stage, Lineker called the performance ‘s***’ and then seemed annoyed and alarmed when England captain Harry Kane was asked about his comment in a press conference.

Lineker then spent the rest of the tournament frantically backtracking, attempting a Hoddle-esque version of ‘I never said them things’ and accusing the written press of being cowards who are too afraid to ask tough questions.

I used to have a great deal of respect for Lineker but he is the only coward in this particular story. He said what he said and he should own it or apologise for it. The reality is that Lineker is in the vanguard of a new strand of media operators locked in a sound-bite arms race who think that the more extreme and aggressive their comments, the more views it will bring them. They blame the media for putting pressure on players without acknowledging that they are the media, too.

Lineker can try to blame the written press if he wants but most people see through that ruse. His comment hung over the BBC’s coverage throughout the tournament and overshadowed the outstanding work of many of his colleagues, a high percentage of whom now appear to be thoroughly disillusioned with their star presenter’s behaviour.

Best stadium

Red Bull Arena, Leipzig. The stadium design is a brilliant fusion of old and new. Built inside the contours of the Cold War era Zentralstadion, the stadium feels like it is submerged in the bowl of the Soviet-style arena that now houses it. A path runs around the rim of the old stadium so that you can gaze down at the stands beneath you. The staircases do not go up into the stands, as they would at a conventional stadium. They go down into the stands.

I love the Olympiastadion in Berlin for its sense of history and the Red Bull Arena carries similar echoes. I wish we preserved elements of our old football stadiums in the UK with the same respect and reverence that they do in Germany. The old Highbury stadium is an exception to that rule.

Best currywurst

I put a good deal of effort into researching this. I made it to all 10 stadiums and had currywurst at every one. I considered myself a mere enthusiast of the genre before this tournament. Now, I would like to think I am a connoisseur. The currywurst at the Westfalenstadion in Dortmund topped my rankings. The sauce was rich and spicy and the wurst was rich and meaty. I watched them putting the sausage through the machine that chops it up into slices in one of the stalls on the Westfalenstadion concourse. It was like being at a chef’s table.

Best quote

Cole Palmer, who was as laconically scathing as only a Mancunian can be with his response to a suggestion from an English writer that people called him ‘Beans’ because he had a serious liking for baked beans.

‘I don’t have a serious liking for them,’ Palmer said. ‘I have just had them a few times.’ We persisted. ‘But some players call you Beans,’ he was told. ‘No,’ Palmer said. ‘No one calls me Beans.’

Best bar

I am a stranger to bars and an exemplar of clean living but I did pop into Zwiebelfisch, an old favourite of mine in Savignyplatz, for a brief moment of consolation after England’s defeat in Berlin on Sunday night. It’s still a highlight of any trip to the wonderful German capital.