Jordan Henderson hopes Euro pain can fuel England revival

England's Jordan Henderson, left, and Michael Keane train ahead of Saturday's World Cup qualifier against Malta. Picture: Nick Potts/PA

Jordan Henderson still winces when Iceland is mentioned but hopes the pain of letting his country down at Euro 2016 can fuel a brighter future for England.

An optimistic squad headed to France in the summer but promise failed to translate into results, with an undercooked and overwhelmed England bowing out to Iceland, a country the size of Leicester, at the last-16 stage.

Roy Hodgson resigned as manager immediately and Henderson, an unused substitute in the 2-1 loss, vividly remembers the dressing room that night in Nice.

“It was a horrible place to be,” he said. “We felt we had let ourselves down, we had let the country down, the manager – everyone, really. People were emotional.

“I think the manager was emotional with the talk that he gave afterwards. It wasn’t nice to see. Everyone is human. Sometimes people think we are machines and they can just chuck everything at whoever the manager is and criticise.

“But, at the end of the day, I can tell you we do care. In that dressing room afterwards, it wasn’t a nice place to be.

“But there is only us who can turn that around. We have got to use that in the future as a positive to turn it around.

“Hopefully we can look back at that one day after a lot of better things have happened.”

The Iceland loss will stay with Henderson forever and while he accepts talk is cheap, he says it is up to the team to now show they are “good enough to do something special”.

After mulling over it during his pre-season break, the 26-year-old believes the defeat was due to a lack of positivity and patience rather than belief. The Liverpool midfielder also rejected the theory that a mental block hinders England’s players in knock-out football.

“I think mentality is big in football,” Henderson said. “I wouldn’t say there was a mental block in the team. I feel very much that the team is together, a very close group and we do a lot of things outside of training, all together, which I think helps that.