Well done Gareth Southgate, whatever happens next – he is a young man that has taken his opportunity, stamped his own mark on the squad and shown passion where necessary – what a breath of fresh air from the several previous so-say experienced managers that have held the England post, writes Peter Mitchell.

At last we can stop talking about penalty shootouts!

The young England team showed superb restraint under very difficult conditions and, for a change, fair play won – but only just.

Colombia obviously have some very gifted players but unfortunately it took them 70 minutes to begin thinking about playing some football. At times their antics reminded me of the infamous England v Argentina quarter final of 1966!

The competition has been marred by even more play acting and histrionics than usual and FIFA should perform a post-mortem to look closely at all these aspects and retrospectively penalise, heavily, serious wrong doers – both teams and individuals.

Otherwise this will just carry on and get progressively worse – its already creeping more and more into each country’s domestic matches.

As for VAR, perhaps the less said the better. Good in theory but weak in practice. Far too inconsistent as to when and why it is consulted. Almost as many interpretations as the  offside law itself !

I’ve seen nothing so far that our boys should be too concerned about – and if we should meet and beat Russia in the semis that will just give Mr Putin something else to curse the English fo!

Brazil or Belgium will the tough one, but that wouldn’t be until the final itself, and just getting there would be a massive achievement and improvement.