The parents of a three-year-old boy who was attacked in a crocodile enclosure say they are “amazed” at the progress he is making and that he is “smiling again”.

The boy was visiting Johnsons of Old Hurst near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, on 18 June when he was attacked by at least one of the animals.

In a post on a fundraising page, his parents said: “Four weeks later and the cheeky little boy that we love so much is talking to the nurses, playing using his feet and smiling again.”

Police arrested and bailed a 30-year-old man from Norfolk on suspicion of attempted murder after the incident.

The boy’s parents recalled arriving at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and experiencing “the worst 12 hours” of their lives after the attack, “signing consent forms involving resuscitation and amputation”.

They said he received injuries to his arms, neck, head, face and suffered broken bones.

The boy has since had seven surgeries, with the latest being surgeons completing “a nerve graft on his arm”.

“They harvested a nerve from his leg to replace part of the nerve that was missing in his left arm,” his parents said on the fundraising page, which has so far raised over £67,000.

“Over time, this nerve will hopefully embed and help our son to regain some function in his left hand.

“We won’t know whether the nerve graft has been successful until tests can be carried out in a few months’ time.

“We were unsure if our son was going to make it and that was the worst feeling in the world.

“We are amazed at how far he has come.”

Changes to Cambridgeshire and Peterborough’s councils have been delayed until the autumn, sparking outrage from councillors

Council staff and residents have been plunged into “great uncertainty” after a delay on a decision on local government reorganisation (LGR), councillors say.

An announcement on the future of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough‘s local authorities was expected on Thursday (July 16), but minister Steve Reed said he “decided more time is needed”. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government said a decision on “which option, if any, of those presented” would come by October at the latest.

Leader of Cambridgeshire County Council, Councillor Lucy Nethsingha, said she was “deeply disappointed” by the delay, but “not particularly surprised”.

Ben Obese-Jecty, MP for Huntingdon, revealed last week that leaks suggested option D would be chosen – which would have split Huntingdonshire in two. The Conservative MP said the delay “leaves residents in limbo” around “the future of Huntingdonshire and means damaging uncertainty over crucial local services”.

He said: “After months of discussion Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is now one of only two local authority areas in the country without clarity on what the structure will look like or what issues are causing this unacceptable delay. By delaying the decision until the Autumn there is a real risk that the new unitary won’t have enough time to restructure before next year’s local elections.”

Cllr Elliot Tong, leader of the Green group on Cambridgeshire County Council, said the delay came as a surprise. He said: “I was surprised because I didn’t think things could possibly get any worse – I thought every mistake that [could have] been made, had been made.

“Delaying the elections and then suddenly deciding not to do that – I thought all of the growing pains were out of the way but somehow Labour can still surprise me.”

Cllr Tong, who also sits on Cambridge City Council, said it was “very disappointing” and residents aren’t being given “any reassurance” about the city’s future. He said: “This entire plan doesn’t seem to have any confidence behind it so how can residents have any confidence in it?”

Cllr Mike Davey, speaking at a Cambridge City Council meeting on Thursday (July 16), said the delay was “hugely disappointing”. The Labour councillor said the delay causes “great uncertainty” for council staff and he would be meeting with other council leaders and chief executives to “understand our next steps”.

Cllr Tim Bick, leader of the Lib Dem group, told the council the delay was “unhelpful and destabilising” for “anyone we do business with on behalf of the public”.

He said: “The government has rightly spoken of the importance of Cambridge to the country and there are enormous ambitions for us – but today’s failure to make a decision really doesn’t sound like it. My concern is this whole process has been destabilised by antics in the north of the county.

“What I hear is that a process for existing councils to participate in was hijacked by Peterborough’s Labour MPs, who submitted little more than an idea of a footprint to pursue something which sounds very party-politically driven. Trying to solve Peterborough’s existing unsustainability as a unitary council but risking the creation of a new unsustainable unitary in the middle of Cambridgeshire.”

The council were asked to vote on noting the report updating them on the delay, but many councillors said they would not vote in favour of this. Cllr Davey said: “You have noted it by reading it – I can’t work out what this means.”

Cllr Bick said: “It ought to be taken as a vote if members ask for that and members can read into it what significance they want. Cllr Davey would obviously say it’s pointless but it’s all we have as a way of demonstrating our incredible frustration and dissatisfaction with where we now are.”

The council voted against noting the report with 12 votes for, 16 against, and eight abstentions.

In this recipe, the courgettes are cooked long and slow, in plenty of olive oil, with a sprinkling of dried chilli and lots of finely sliced garlic. The resulting luxurious combination is delicious on its own, served with a scattering of mint and some toasted almonds as a stand-alone dish, or as a silky bed on which to pile pork chops or roast chicken. 

After eating them like this, you’ll never think ill of a courgette again. I love mint here, but any soft herb is good (dill, tarragon, basil or parsley).

Amid rife speculation about the make-up of his Cabinet, Mr Burnham said: “I haven’t made any decisions yet about who will be in that top team, but I will soon, and when I have, you will see it reflects all parts of our party, all communities, and it will reflect your own place within this great party of ours – a stronger, more united Labour Party lifting up a stronger and more united Britain.”

Deep beneath the French-Swiss border, the world’s largest scientific instrument has fallen silent. After years of smashing proton particles together at nearly the speed of light, Cern’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has stopped operations and entered a long shutdown.

While no particle collisions are taking place at the LHC, thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians are dismantling parts of the machine, installing new technologies and preparing one of the most ambitious upgrades ever attempted in experimental physics.

When it switches on again, around 2030, it will become the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC), capable of delivering roughly seven times more data than the collider that discovered the Higgs boson.

For me, this shutdown marks another milestone in a project that has shaped much of my scientific life. I first became involved in the High-Luminosity collider long before the Higgs boson particle was discovered in 2012. Over nearly two decades I have had the privilege of contributing to the programme on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the United States, I served as upgrade coordinator for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), a key experiment at the LHC. The CMS is built at one of the points within the Large Hadron Collider where separate beams of proton particles collide. CMS then captures data from these collisions so that it can be analysed by Cern physicists. I helped lead the international effort preparing CMS for the HL-collider era.

Today, in Oxford, I work on another LHC experiment called Atlas. Atlas and CMS work in broadly similar ways, but having two machines like this helps ensure significant discoveries by one experiment are cross-checked by a counterpart with a separate team of scientists. Here, my colleagues and I are building silicon pixel detector modules for its upgraded inner tracker. This will form a vital part of the HL-LHC upgrade.

A few months ago, I watched the first complete pixel ring assembled in Oxford. It was strikingly beautiful: a delicate arrangement of silicon sensors, electronics and support structures whose elegance reflected years of painstaking engineering.

For the first time, the detector we had imagined through countless design reviews, prototypes and production meetings had become real.

Our contribution is just one part of a detector being built by teams across the world. Thousands of components must come together before the High Luminosity collider is ready to explore a new frontier in particle physics.

The LHC has already transformed our understanding of nature. Its discovery of the Higgs boson confirmed the mechanism that gives elementary particles their mass. The Higgs had been the last missing piece in the standard model of particle physics. This is the best theory to explain elementary particles and the three fundamental forces that govern their interactions. But, as is often the case in science, answering one question opened many others.

Investigating the Higgs

Many of the most important questions now are no longer about whether the Higgs exists, but whether it behaves exactly as predicted. Tiny deviations from the standard model could point towards entirely new particles or forces. Such discoveries would help us understand mysteries such as dark matter or why the universe contains far more matter than antimatter.

The challenge is that these clues are incredibly subtle. Rather than requiring much higher collision energies, they demand vastly more collisions. The HL-LHC will increase the collider’s luminosity – the number of proton collisions it produces – by about a factor of seven over its lifetime.

Imagine replacing a camera that takes one photograph every second with one that captures seven. Each image looks much the same, but together they reveal details that would otherwise remain invisible.

For Higgs physics, that extra data will be transformative. The Higgs boson is remarkably elusive. Some of its most interesting decays – where it transforms into other particles – are so rare that they have remained just beyond the reach of today’s LHC. Others have only recently emerged as tantalising hints.

One example is the decay of the Higgs boson into two muons (a muon is an unstable, subatomic particle). This decay is a rare process that tests whether the Higgs couples to second-generation lepton particles. Another is the decay of the Higgs into charm quark particles. This is one of the most difficult Higgs measurements because it must be extracted from an overwhelming background of ordinary particle collisions.

These processes test one of the Higgs boson’s most fundamental properties: whether it interacts with lighter particles exactly as predicted by the standard model. Any deviation from those predictions, even a small one, could be evidence that new particles or forces are influencing the Higgs behind the scenes.

And perhaps the most ambitious goal of all is observing Higgs boson pairs, which would allow us to measure, for the first time, the Higgs self-coupling – the strength with which the Higgs field interacts with itself. That interaction determines the shape of the Higgs field that fills all of space and is thought to have played a key role in the evolution of the universe moments after the Big Bang.

These are exactly the kinds of measurements that motivated the design of the upgraded LHC. Achieving them requires a revolution not only in the accelerator itself but also in the detectors that record the collisions.

Particle web

At the High Luminosity LHC, every crossing of the proton beams will produce up to 200 simultaneous proton-proton interactions, several times more than today. Untangling this dense web of particles demands detectors that are faster, more precise and far more resistant to radiation than anything built before.

At the heart of the Atlas and CMS experiments, entirely new silicon tracking detectors are replacing the existing ones. They must survive radiation levels that would quickly destroy previous generations of sensors while measuring particle trajectories with extraordinary precision. Achieving this has required years of advances in silicon sensor technology, ultra-fast electronics, cooling systems and lightweight mechanical structures.

One of the most innovative features of the upgraded detectors is the addition of precision timing. New timing detectors – the High Granularity Timing Detector in Atlas and a similar system in CMS – will measure the arrival time of particles with a precision of only a few tens of trillionths of a second. Although hundreds of collisions occur almost simultaneously, they do not happen at exactly the same instant.

By adding time as a fourth dimension to particle tracking, these detectors will allow physicists to associate each particle with the correct collision, making it possible to reconstruct rare Higgs events hidden within an enormous background of overlapping interactions.

One of the greatest rewards of working on these detectors is seeing the next generation of physicists preparing to use them. The students helping to assemble today’s detectors will spend much of their careers analysing the data they eventually collect.

When the HL–LHC begins operating, it will not simply extend the scientific programme of the Large Hadron Collider. It will usher in a new era of precision Higgs physics. Whether it reveals subtle cracks in the standard model or confirms our current understanding with unprecedented accuracy, it will shape particle physics for decades to come.

Jesy Nelson has slammed the government for the delay in approving SMA testing for all UK-born babies during her appearance on This Morning on Friday.

The mother-of-two, 35, revealed in January her now 14-month-old twins, Ocean and Story, had been diagnosed with SMA Type 1, a rare muscle-wasting condition. 

And after months of tirelessly campaign, Jesy announced this week that the SMA Type 1 screening test will now be rolled out across the whole of the UK.

However, Jesy voiced her anger at the delay it took for the screening test to be rolled out as she fumed ‘it should not have taken me to come along for it to happen’.

Speaking to This Morning hosts Dermot O’Leary and Alison Hammond about the ‘bittersweet’ moment, Jesy explained: ‘I don’t know what to say. Yesterday I couldn’t stop crying. 

‘As proud as I feel, it was also a bittersweet moment. At the end of the day, I am super proud. This isn’t just me, this has been going on for years now.

‘I feel so proud that everyone got behind it.’

She added: ‘Wales and Northern Ireland still don’t have it. Why would I stop here? It would feel wrong to just stop at England now.

The mother-of-two revealed in January her now 14-month-old twins, Ocean and Story, had been diagnosed with SMA Type 1, a rare muscle-wasting condition 

‘The noise that everyone rallied together, you can’t ignore it. It should have never taken for me to come along to be taken seriously, this has been going on for years. People have being trying to take this to Parliament.’

Speaking in Parliament before the testing was ruled out, politician Sharon Hodgson said the remaining six laboratories ‘do not currently have the requisite equipment’ for testing. ‘If that changes, more labs could be included,’ she added.

Later Jesy addressed her followers over on Instagram as she reflected on the disappointment of the day and called out Sharon, who is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Health and Social Care for the decision. 

She told her viewers: ‘There is factual evidence that this treatment, if given from birth, is completely life changing to a child that is diagnosed with SMA. 

‘If it isn’t, and they get left untreated, there are facts that if your child doesn’t get treatment, they will not see their second birthday. They will die before the age of two. And there were families in that room yesterday that had children that have died from this horrendous disease. 

‘And we had the Health Minister Sharon give her argument against why it should not be rolled across the whole of England. 

‘So my question to Sharon is, if it’s safe enough for 72 per cent of England to get this tested at birth, then why is it not good enough for the 28 per cent of England to not get tested at birth? How does that make any sense? 

‘Her exact words were, “need to make sure that this does more good than harm”. Please tell me how that statement makes any sense.’

Jesy went on to explain that she spoke to Sharon after the debate and asked her whether she had ever met a child with SMA, to which Sharon said she hadn’t. 

The singer then showed Sharon a video of sisters Maisie and Amelia, who both have SMA however one was treated from birth and the other wasn’t. 

She explained that they have the exact same diagnosis but one is in a wheelchair but the other is running along, pulling her sister along. 

This week, Jesy announced the SMA Type 1 screening test will now be rolled out across the whole of the UK as a result of her campaigning’ (pictured with CEO of SMA UK Giles Lomax) 

However, Jesy voiced her anger at the delay it took for the screening test to be rolled out as she fumed ‘it should not have taken me to come along for it to happen’

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Jesy continued: ‘When I showed her in this video, her exact words were, “Wow, is that what the treatment does? Wow”. She was gobsmacked.’

Sharing the latest update exclusively with the Daily Mail Jesy said she was ‘so proud’ of everyone involved as she celebrated the difference this will make to babies with SMA as she added ‘this is all I ever wanted’. 

Revealing the news, Jesy said: ‘OK, so yesterday I had a phone call with Sharon [Hodgson], the health minister, and James Murray [Secretary of State for Health and Social Care] and they have decided to roll it out across the whole of the UK.

‘It’s an emotional day. I’m still taking it in to be honest. It’s amazing. It’s just mind-blowing. I feel so proud. I just feel so proud of everyone that’s been a part of getting it to this place because now future SMA baby’s lives are gonna look completely different. And that is all I ever wanted.

‘It will never not be heartbreaking to hear that your child has SMA, but to know that their life will not have to look like this is just amazing.’

Last month, Jesy headed to Parliament for a debate on whether a newborn screening for the disease would be rolled out across the whole of England. 

Devastatingly the result of the debate was not what Jesy and the SMA community had hoped for and the decision remained that only 72 per cent of the country would have access to newborn screening when it is introduced in October, while the other 28 per cent still wouldn’t. 

However the Government have now confirmed the expansion of the scheme that will see hundreds of thousands of babies screened in the roll-out which will begin in October this year. 

SMA can leave babies unable to sit up, crawl or walk. In the most severe cases, it stops them breathing or swallowing but caught early enough treatment can significantly improve outcomes for affected children.

Testing works through a simple heel prick to collect a small sample of blood from the baby, taken shortly after birth.

The SMA screening evaluation will begin across England in the autumn, and the programme is moving faster than originally planned. 

Labs are set to start testing babies for SMA from October 2026, three months ahead of schedule, after the government committed to speeding up the rollout earlier this year. 

Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, James Murray, said: ‘No parent should have to watch their child lose the ability to move or breathe, knowing that earlier treatment could have made all the difference.

‘This expansion means babies across England will be tested from birth, giving them the best possible chance of a full and healthy life, and another step in the right direction as we do all we can to reduce health inequalities.

Jesy said: ‘I feel super proud that my girl’s story has been a part of change and I can’t wait, when they’re a bit older and they understand to be able to tell them that’

‘I’m in awe of the campaigners who’ve worked tirelessly to raise awareness of this rare but very serious genetic condition. We’re moving faster and rolling screening out more widely to ensure children get the best treatment from the earliest possible moment.’

Meanwhile Chief Executive Officer of SMA UK Giles Lomax said: ‘After years of campaigning by the SMA Community and our partner organisations, this is a hugely important step forward. 

‘When newborn screening for SMA begins later this year in October, thousands of babies will benefit from earlier diagnosis and access to life-changing treatment.

‘We are delighted to see the confirmation that the remaining six screening laboratories will begin screening from October 2027, this demonstrates a clear commitment to making newborn screening available across England.

‘No family should face a postcode lottery when it comes to a condition where every day without treatment can lead to irreversible loss of motor neurons. 

‘We are incredibly grateful to the families, clinicians, researchers, supporters and campaigners who have helped us reach this point, and we look forward to the day when every newborn across the whole of the UK is offered this simple, life-changing test.’

Andy Burnham was officially ‘coronated’ as Labour leader today – and immediately blamed Margaret Thatcher for the country’s problems.

The Makerfield MP has been unveiled as the winner of the bizarre one-candidate contest at an event at the TUC headquarters in London, watched by fawning would-be Cabinet ministers.

In his speech, Mr Burnham – who ditched his trademark black t-shirt for a suit and tie – harked back to a time before the ‘wrong turns’ of the 1980s as his ‘coronation’ at the top of the party concludes.

He hinted at nationalisations and more public control, telling activists he would ‘return to a Labour they once knew’ and ‘eradicate’ Reform. 

He said the movement was ‘forged in the steelworks’ and dockyards, committing to end ‘Neoliberalism’ – a vague term often used on the Left to denounce capitalism. 

Despite mounting a concerted effort to kick Keir Starmer out, Mr Burnham ehthusiastically praised his ‘service to our party and our country’. 

However, Mr Burnham – who will officially replace Sir Keir as PM on Monday – is still not expected to take any questions from the media.

Instead he has been posting soft-soap social media clips, including him chatting about how he likes his tea, whether he wears socks with sandals, and his disapproval of Yorkshire puddings with Christmas dinner.

Teeing up his confirmation earlier, Mr Burnham posted on X that he will ‘put power back where it belongs’.

‘The next few days are about more than changing who governs Britain. They’re about changing how Britain is governed,’ he wrote. 

Mr Burnham has become Labour leader after a token process that saw him nominated by nearly 95 per cent of MPs, weeks after he returned to the Commons in a by-election. 

He did not stand on Labour’s manifesto in 2024 and the 25,000 voters who backed him in Makerfield represent just 0.05 per cent of the British electorate. 

One of the few backbenchers who did not endorse him, Graham Stringer, said he did not want to sign a ‘blank cheque’ – warning the former Greater Manchester Mayor needs to be more up front about his intentions. 

On another dramatic day in UK politics:

• Mr Burnham hinted he will expend ‘quite a lot of political capital’ on social care reforms – after previously backing a ‘death tax’ charge on inheritance;
• Close ally Steve Rotheram, the Liverpool Metro Mayor, has given another strong hint at a ‘wealth tax’, arguing that it should be targeted at raising spending for a ‘sector or area’; 
• Sir Keir will not attend his successor’s official confirmation, after spending yesterday on a farewell visit to Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv;
• Removal vans have been seen outside Downing Street as preparations for the handover continue; 
• Wes Streeting has denied a bizarre claim that he was spotted in tears near Mr Burnham’s Parliamentary office.  

The Makerfield MP has been unveiled as the winner of the bizarre one-candidate contest at an event in London, watched by fawning would-be Cabinet ministers

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Deputy leader Lucy Powell introduced Mr Burnham, admitting the contest was not a ‘nailbiter’

Mr Burnham will say ‘political power was centralised and economic power privatised’ during Thatcher’s time as premier

Removal vans have been seen outside Downing Street as preparations for the handover continue

Staff were packing away boxes with Sir Keir and his family set to move out shortly  

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In his address this lunchtime he promised to be ‘unashamedly Labour in our priorities and in the decisions we take’. 

He said his government will have the ‘courage to fix the big things that politics has neglected’ and the ‘conviction to argue for our plans’.

Mr Burnham insisted Britain took ‘a series of wrong turns in the 1980s’ when ‘political power was centralised and economic power privatised’.

Making the economy work for people across the UK will require ‘a new path to the one we’ve been on for the last 40 years’, he said.

‘This country does not work for working class communities like the city of my birth,’ he said.

‘In fact, it turned its back on them. Political power was used viciously against them to protect vested interests.

‘Economic power cruelly stripped with the deindustrialisation of the 1980s, as it was against so many places up and down the land.’

He added: ‘Change starts with honesty. We must recognise that this generation of politicians, myself included, have failed to challenge a political culture and an economic model that simply doesn’t work well enough for ordinary people.’

Mr Burnham said he would not try to ‘out-Green the Greens’ or shift Right to head off the threat from Reform, but instead insisted the party could be ‘authentically Labour’.

Mr Burnham was backed by 369 of the party’s 403 MPs, far surpassing the 81 needed, and secured the support of eight of the 11 unions affiliated with the party.

He steps into the job at a time when his party has trailed Reform UK in opinion polls for nearly 18 months and Labour will be hoping his presence will spark a bounce and turn around its fortunes.

Sir Keir has said he would have won the next general election if he had not been ousted, but is ‘proud to hand over the party in good shape’ to his successor.

But there is no clarity about Mr Burnham’s policies, or how they might differ from Sir Keir’s agenda.

Business and unions have been alarmed at the idea of ‘Red’ Ed Miliband being made Chancellor – a prospect that seems to have receded.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is now being tipped for the crucial job. 

Business and unions have been alarmed at the idea of ‘Red’ Ed Miliband being made Chancellor – a prospect that seems to have receded

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Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is now being tipped for the crucial No11 job

Mr Burnham has spoken about how he wants to push powers to local leaders outside Westminster as part of his devolution agenda and to create a ‘No 10 North’ outpost of Downing Street based in Manchester.

He has said he will stick to Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules as well as manifesto pledges not to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance, but declined to rule out a wealth tax in an interview this week.

The Liberal Democrats have urged him to overhaul the water industry in his first weeks as prime minister and immediately place Thames Water into a special administration regime.

Mr Burnham has drafted in Matthew McGregor, who has worked on elections in the UK and abroad and is currently chief executive of campaign group 38 Degrees, as his No 10 director of political strategy.

The summer is in full swing as thousands of tourists embark on a journey to Greece, hoping to soak up the sun and enjoy the water.

But seven Greek islands in the Aegean Sea are beginning to declare drought conditions to preserve water, and one is relying on bottled water entirely.

Astypalaia, Tinos, Alonissos, Leros, Patmos, Symi and Karpathos are all facing dry conditions this summer, which they fear could impact the number of tourists the islands see each year.

Astypalaia relies on bottled water for drinking and didn’t receive much of the rain which drenched the rest of Greece this winter.

Nikos Komineas, mayor of the island, said: ‘If we collected all the water dropped throughout the year in a bucket or in a washbowl, it would be 2.5 centimeters deep.’

Hotel owner Maria Alkalai, 42, said she’s incentivising guests to save water by offering vouchers.

Anyone who skips the daily cleaning service receives a 5 euro coupon – ‘Clients have embraced it,’ she said.

Greece’s Environment Minister Stavros Papastavrou has approved 15 million euros ($17 million) for desalination, grid upgrades, and water tanks on nine of Greece’s islands.

Water resilience is becoming a major issue in Greece, however, potentially stunting economic growth and locals if not addressed soon.

In 2025, to tackle some of the water scarcity, hotels said they would fill their pools with seawater.

Despite tourists’ complaints, Greece is under increasing pressure to reimagine tourism in a sustainable way amid climate change and rising visitor numbers.

Greece has long been a popular tourist destination but the number of visitors has exploded in recent years. In 2023, Greece saw record highs with 33 million foreign visitors in total. 

But this rise in tourism has sparked protests across several Greek islands, where locals are increasingly concerned about the impact of overtourism.

In the summer, several protests were held across the Cyclades, a collection of Aegean islands that includes popular tourist destinations like Santorini and Mykonos. 

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

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The way England’s run at this World Cup ended was desperately disappointing, but there are still plenty of positives for them to take away from the tournament.

I’ve co-commentated on all of their games and my most memorable moment has to be their epic win over Mexico at the Azteca Stadium in the last 16. It was the best game of the tournament, at the best stadium and with the best atmosphere.

I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed togetherness or team spirit like that before, either. That’s why I described it as the best team performance I’ve seen from any England side in my lifetime, particularly away from home. It made me think anything was possible from this team.

Overall, the players can be very proud of all their efforts because they got through lots of tough situations. When they did fall short, it was not for the want of trying either.

What next from England? Well, Tuchel is going to lead pretty much the same group of players into next year’s Euro qualifiers – but I’d expect three or four changes to his next squad, because this one lacked balance and it was not the one I would have chosen.

One area of concern is the centre-forward position because Harry Kane turns 33 in a couple of weeks and I would ask where are our strikers who are screaming to replace him.

But, overall, I don’t look at the players Tuchel has available and think they are far away from what we will need.

Whatever happens in Saturday’s third-place play-off – which is a nonsense by the way – England will end this World Cup the same way they seem to finish every major tournament.

By that, I mean they will look back with frustration, and look ahead with the same hope that things will be different next time.

Tuchel should believe it too, because so much of Euro 2028 will be played on home soil and we saw how close we went when we last hosted matches in 2021, reaching the final – like we did two years ago.

There I go again, though, dreaming of glory. That won’t change until we finally get over the line – and all we really know for certain is we will be back to try again.

Alan Shearer was speaking to BBC Sport’s Chris Bevan