It is not so long ago the fall-out from a summer international football tournament in this country was a grizzly affair.

A post-mortem laying bare all the perceived ills of a structure considered unfit for purpose.

Some of the polemic would be fair comment. It is logical, not arrogant, to conclude a nation that counts football as its number-one sport and boasts a population of more than 50 million, has serially underperformed against the achievements of less-resourced countries.

England’s European Championship match against Italy at Wembley on Sunday is a second major final for the country and provides a startling and welcome new narrative.

The BBC report following England’s draw with Algeria at the 2010 World Cup noted Fabio Capello’s team “looked jaded and lacked spark or inspiration”.

More damning was the assertion that Algeria “were more comfortable in possession than England”.

If that underwhelming night in Cape Town qualified as a low, then being dumped out of the 2016 European Championship by Iceland represented the nadir for English football.

A website comment piece reflecting on that defeat five summers ago took issue – reasonably – with England’s technically impoverished performance.

A passage from the autobiography of accomplished former Holland forward Dennis Bergkamp was cited to illustrate how our foreign counterparts placed a premium on mastery of the ball.

“Most of the time I was by myself, just kicking the ball against the wall, seeing how it bounces, how it comes back, just controlling it,” wrote Bergkamp of how he would while away childhood hours in Amsterdam.

“I was just very intrigued by how the ball moves, how the spin worked, what you could do with spin.”

This came to mind when Dominic Calvert-Lewin spoke recently to Everton’s matchday programme.

As he advanced through Sheffield United’s junior teams, Calvert-Lewin would engineer a very premature arrival for training.

A white lie consistently told to mum stemmed from the same place as Bergkamp’s motivation for playing one-twos with bricks and mortar.

“I’d tell my mum training would start at 4.30pm, which was two hours early, just so I could practice by myself,” related Calvert-Lewin.

“I did that from probably 12 until 16, when I became full-time.

“I’d go on the indoor pitch and smash the ball against the wall for hours on end.

“I loved the ball at my feet.

“I would clip it at the wall, from long range and short range.

“Go in the corner and smash the ball off one wall, take a touch with my right foot and play it with my left off the other wall.

“Without realising, all that contact on the ball was probably a catalyst for helping me cope with the Premier League.”

Calvert-Lewin was on the field for the closing 17 minutes of England’s European Championship quarter-final victory over Ukraine last Saturday.

His playing time in this competition has been sparing but the Everton striker – in common with clubmate Jordan Pickford – epitomises the shift in culture and self-assurance of an England team preparing for the national side’s first tournament final in 55 years.

Gareth Southgate, the England manager, was a key driver in plans for the national football centre at St George’s Park in his role as the FA’s head of elite development.

He left that role after 18 months in July 2012 – shortly before the facility, which has hosted more than 450 England teams in nine years, opened in October 2012 – but returned to the national set-up as Under-21 manager in 2013, when the former England defender began the process of prioritising tournament experience for young players.

England returned to the annual Toulon Tournament following a nine-year absence in 2014.

In 2016, 30 days before the seniors slumped to Iceland, a team featuring Pickford won the French competition.

Even before England took their last breath at the 2016 European Championship, 150km east in Nice, then, plans to resuscitate the national side were well under way.

The following summer, Calvert-Lewin scored the only goal in the Under-20 World Cup final.

England were close to full-strength for that 2017 competition in South Korea, as clubs formerly reluctant to release players for age-group tournaments began investing faith in a pioneering, dynamic Three Lions structure.

The 26 players in Southgate’s current European Championship squad boast a combined total of 493 appearances across England’s Under-16 to Under-21 sides.

Calvert-Lewin has 31 age-group caps. Only the exceptional Phil Foden, an Under-17 World Cup winner with England in 2017, has more caps (51) for the country’s junior teams than Pickford, who played 50 times from Under-16 to Under-21.

After Southgate publicly committed to Pickford as his undisputed number one back in November, the goalkeeper told Everton’s matchday programme: “It was nice for the gaffer to come out and say that.

“There is a lot of competition but I have been in the England system since I was a very young kid.

“They’ve had faith in me and I’ve never let them down.

“That is down to my hard work as well.

“The gaffer is brilliant at that [supporting players], he sticks by you.”

England’s goalkeeper against Algeria 11 years ago was David James. He replaced Rob Green, dropped after an opening draw against USA.

That change was the product of muddled thinking and an absence of forethought.

Southgate, by contrast, is meticulous, a clear-headed strategist.

This isn’t an England regime that sticks a finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing.

The tweaks in personnel or formation which have been a hallmark of Southgate's plotting this summer stem from studying and analysis and confidence in a group of players who bow to nobody in terms of either technical quality or football intelligence.

Preparing for this tournament, Southgate and assistant Steve Holland compiled comprehensive dossiers on England’s three group opponents – and nine teams they fancied they might run into in the knockout stages.

Denmark were among the nine and the composure and savvy of England’s display for large parts of Wednesday’s semi-final was commented on by plenty of shrewd judges.

It was interesting to observe Calvert-Lewin, not among the matchday 23, straining to hear every word of Southgate’s team talk, as England’s players circled their manager in advance of extra-time against the Danes.

This is a generation of footballers in England who want to learn, who absorb and store details.

Seamus Coleman, who has played all his professional football in England after leaving home in Ireland 12 years ago, told evertonfc.com this week that “players take note of… how managers work and how they are tactically”.

Perhaps there is buy-in from England’s players, too, because they know Southgate will give them a fair crack of the whip.

Calvert-Lewin is 24 and could conceivably play a minimum of four more major summer tournaments for England – beginning with next year’s World Cup in Qatar.

In that interview with Everton’s matchday programme in May, Calvert-Lewin couched words of respect for Harry Kane in terms of his own ambition.

“He [Kane] is in the driving seat, at the moment,” said Calvert-Lewin of England’s premier centre-forward.

“He is England’s striker.

“But my dreams as a kid weren’t to sit on the bench for England.

“My dreams were to play for England in big competitions.

“I am always striving for more.

“I look at how I can cherry-pick things from many strikers’ games.

“It is small steps to, ultimately, being England’s number nine.

“That is my dream and I will do everything to achieve it.”

Southgate's blend of open-mindedness and unflinching ruthlessness when selecting teams and squads, allows players to dare to dream.

Kalvin Phillips is one of three outliers among the squad – with Tyrone Mings and Ben White – having played no under-age international football.

He has been ever-present in this summer’s competition and one of England’s most important players.

Kyle Walker, another enjoying a fabulous European Championship, slipped out of the picture entirely for a spell following the 2018 World Cup but was never written off by the England boss.

It would be disingenuous not to apportion a degree of praise to the Premier League for this English resurgence, too.

Another oft-repeated mantra after abortive tournament efforts was the one about not enough English players performing in foreign leagues.

The point was made in strong terms after the 2016 debacle.

None of England’s 23-man party for the competition in France played outside their own country.

Of winners Portugal’s squad, 15 played in foreign leagues. Germany had nine players from outside the Bundesliga and five of Italy’s group weren’t based at home.

Between the 1996 European Championship and 2018 World Cup, only four players not employed by Premier League clubs – Fraser Forster, Owen Hargreaves, Steve McManaman and David Beckham – were selected by England for summer tournaments.

Not an awful lot has changed this time round. Kieran Trippier is at Atletico Madrid but was a key man for Southgate in the World Cup semi-final run in 2018 when still a Tottenham Hotspur player.

The astonishingly mature 18-year-old Jude Bellingham has unquestionably profited from one season with Borussia Dortmund but was expertly reared by Birmingham City.

Equally, Jadon Sancho, who started the game against Ukraine, has excelled for four years with Dortmund in Germany but appears destined for a return to the Premier League.

The standard an individual must attain to play regular football in England’s top-flight is creating ready-made international performers.

Now, a select group are one match from claiming immortality.

That they sealed their final place by retaining possession for two minutes and 40 seconds, completing 53 passes and using every corner of the pitch as Denmark forlornly chased shadows deep into extra-time, felt very appropriate for this modern England team.

To denigrate England’s keep ball because Denmark were a man down is to wilfully ignore the pressure attached to closing out such a momentous game and innumerable examples of 10 men overcoming 11.

Pickford was involved in that passage of play, sending the ball 50 yards through the air onto the toes of Luke Shaw, just as he’s been at the forefront for England from the start.

The 27-year-old has conceded only once in six matches. He’s made 11 saves in the competition – including some absolute blinders – and completed more punches (six) than any other keeper.

Pickford’s five clean sheets from the start of the tournament is a European Championship record.

The 725 minutes he went without conceding prior to Mikkel Damsgaard scoring for Denmark was the longest an England goalkeeper has managed without conceding – surpassing World Cup winner Gordon Banks’ run of 720 minutes in 1966.

Pickford’s distribution has been first-rate, too.

He revealed in one of those knockabout magazine quizzes a few years ago that he’d have liked to be a holding midfielder.

“I played outfield for my school and loved getting stuck into tackles and scoring worldy goals,” said Pickford.

There was a nod in the same Q&A to Pickford’s appreciation of football history.

Asked for his favourite three goalkeepers, he named Peter Schmeichel and Thomas Sorensen, along with Jim Montgomery, the Sunderland legend forever idolised on Wearside for a remarkable double save in the 1973 FA Cup final win over Leeds United.

He followed Montgomery in Sunderland’s goal, Pickford, completing a route that began as a six-year-old with Washington Envelopes – the keeper is among 22 England players in this squad who started with grassroots teams – and contained numerous stints on loan.

The move to Everton in the summer of 2017 was the catalyst for Pickford to become the best goalkeeper in the country.

All 37 of his senior caps have been won since transferring to Goodison Park.

Cap 38 against Italy could be the one that defines the rest of his life – and makes an England tournament post-mortem redundant for the first time since the front and back pages were devoted to images of Bobby Moore clutching the Jules Rimet Trophy.