England manager Roy Hodgson has admitted that his side lacked the quality and the efficiency of their Germany counterparts this evening.

The Three Lions went down 1-0 to their rivals in a friendly international at Wembley on Tuesday, thanks to Per Mertesacker's first-half goal.

"It was a harsh defeat," BBC Sport quotes him as saying. "We needed better quality tonight. The effort, the work-rate, the desire I can't fault but for all the time we had the ball we weren't as efficient as the Germans were.

"We had some good movement but the quality of our passing was not as good as theirs. We were a small team today and they scored from the second corner they had. Per Mertesacker scored with a wonderful header.

"We used a lot of players and it has been a positive exercise. We learned a lot both positively and negatively but we had a lot of people coming to watch us in these two games and we haven't sent them home with a smile on their face."

England lost 2-0 to Chile in another friendly at Wembley last Friday.