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David James has called on his England team-mates to pay close attention to Euro 2008 if they want to improve.

Portsmouth keeper James will be watching the finals in Austria and Switzerland despite the heartbreak of England failing to qualify.

James says he will be keeping a close eye on Croatia, who England will face in the 2010 World Cup qualifiers, believing they can pick up tips on how to beat their opponents by watching them at Euro 2008.

"I'll watch a lot of it because we have to - that's important if we want to improve," James told The People.

"It won't be comfortable viewing for some players, but I think we need to understand what we are as a team and where we figure, not only in the world game but in Europe too and this is the perfect opportunity for that.

Competition

"We have the World Cup qualifiers starting next season and Croatia are obviously in our group so it will be interesting to see what the competition is like.

"Some players might have said last year when we got knocked out that they won't be watching, but now it's here I don't see the logic of avoiding it and escaping the fact that we didn't qualify.

"We have a group of players who love and appreciate football so I think they'll watch it. It's important we see who we are up against."

James is still shocked England are not playing at Euro 2008, but he has been encouraged by their progress under Fabio Capello.

"We are not in the finals and I'd argue we didn't have the set-up before that we have now," added James. "We had the individual pockets of talent, but the combination didn't work for some reason.

Encouraged

"But what we have had in last three games is a decent win over Switzerland and although we lost to France, it was only by a penalty.

"It wasn't as though they outclassed us and we deserved to lose - we played some very good stuff and the goal was the only difference between us and now they are one of the favourites to win Euro 2008.

"Since then we have beaten a USA side who have been a free-flowing, free-scoring team of late. Before that game we watched a video of the Americans playing Poland and they absolutely destroyed them so that was a test.

"Defensively we were sound against the USA and some of the passing was fantastic.

"We signed off for the summer with a good win over Trinidad in hot conditions and we now have a couple of games to build on that before the qualifiers."