England v Germany: as soon as I saw our tactics I knew we'd lose, says Michael Owen

I watched the England game with family and a couple of friends and, as soon as I saw the formation we were going to play, I said to them, 'We are going to get beat’.

Gone missing: Wayne Rooney, who had a poor World Cup, troops off the field after England's disappointing exit at the hands of Germany on Sunday

There is no one in the world who can convince me that the German players are better than ours, but after seeing our team line up I knew we were going to lose. I don’t think it is down to our players so much; I just feel their formation has basically beaten ours. We were outplayed due to being tactically beaten.

It hurts me to say it as a striker who almost needs to play up front with another, but the days of 4-4-2 against a good team are going. I said from the start of the tournament that I would be concerned with playing that formation.

I hoped that the manager would revert to 4-5-1 as soon as we met stronger teams, because if you lose that midfield battle, you lose the game more often than not.

I think 4-4-2 is a good formation, but if things are not going right the easiest thing in the world is to get rigid. As a player, you think, 'We are struggling, I’ll just play in my position’ and all of a sudden you are in two straight lines of four and you get people going between the two lines.

Germany obviously had their two solid midfielders and then their player just off the striker, who was actually breaking from a deeper midfield position. They basically had one extra in the midfield. People say we looked awful at the back, but any team in the world will look awful at the back if the game pans out the way it did.

It is frustrating because we looked so good and assured in qualifying. I think there was definitely a change of formation from those games, when tactically we looked as if we couldn’t get beaten.

People will look at Frank Lampard’s 'goal’ as a turning point and, yes, everyone can see it should have counted and, yes, we do need video technology. But two wrongs do not make a right. It did not make any difference and it did not deserve to make any difference.

It will be the end now for one or two players. A lot of the squad will be well into their thirties by the time of the next World Cup and, while no doubt some of them will stay in the England team, you would want more coming through. You would like to see more players in the 20-22 age bracket, but we are top heavy in good older players. That it is a bit worrying.

As for the wider issues, I think the question of a mid-season break and the demands of the fixture list is something worthy of debate. You look at some of our players who have been playing all season and we do not look fresh. We do seem to go into World Cups with a lot of injuries.

The Premier League demands a lot more effort than any other and your body cannot keep doing it and doing it over a full season. You cannot have everything. You want the best league in the world, you want fast, entertaining football which we play all season through any weather. You get all that in England, so there has to be a sacrifice somewhere and maybe it is taking its toll in the tournaments.

In the longer term, you have to fear for the future of the game. Football is massively popular in England but, when I was a kid, I never had a computer or anything. I drive along the road now and look at parks and they are empty. When school was finished I would be straight to the park at 4pm and my mum would be dragging me by the ear at 9pm to get home to bed.

Life has changed and kids cannot be getting the same practice as my generation. Yet look at the beaches in Brazil and the streets of Africa and you can see why so many players come from abroad.