England manager Roy Hodgson lamented another injury loss after Manchester United midfielder Michael Carrick suffered suspected ankle ligament damage in Friday night's 2-0 friendly defeat to Spain in Alicante.
Second-half goals from Villarreal right-back Mario Gaspart and Arsenal midfielder Santi Cazorla saw Spain take a deserved win at the Estadio Jose Rico Perez.
But both sides suffered injury concerns, with Spain losing Bayern Munich midfielder Thiago Alcantara to a knee problem in the first half with United's Carrick leaving on a stretcher late on.
The England boss told his postgame news conference that it was early to say yet the full extent of Carrick's problem, but the initial prognosis was not good and his squad was already threadbare due to other injury concerns.
"It doesn't look good -- he has severely twisted ankle, [which] normally means ligament damage, but we won't know until X-ray or scan tomorrow," Hodgson said. "It means we are one further player down going into Tuesday's game [against France].
"In this moment in time we could do without that -- 11 missing to start off with, and maybe now 13 or 14. That is not an excuse as we thought the team we put out tonight were capable of winning the game. This is going to put a lot of pressure on players like Dele Alli and Eric Dier, as France are one of top teams in the world."
Hodgson said he was disappointed to have lost the game, and pointed to Spain's first goal -- started and finished spectacularly by young right-back Mario -- as the key moment.
"Over 70 minutes we worked hard defensively -- we knew it would be tough ask against Spain, who move the ball so well," he said. "We hoped on the counter we could cause them some problems. At moments we did that, but we didn't profit enough from those moments.
"Strangely enough, the opening goal, for me the decisive goal, came from a Spanish counter-attack. By giving the ball away we gave them a chance to counter and score a spectacular goal.
"At that moment we'd just taken off two midfielders, [Adam] Lallana and [Fabian] Delph, who was finding it tough after a long time out. We have to learn a lesson from it, and remember that playing against teams of this quality, you cannot afford to make any technical mistakes in wrong areas, as you'll get punished."
Hodgson said Spain had deserved their victory overall, as England had not been able to keep possession for long enough or hurt the defending European champions on the break.
"We didn't pass the ball as well as we would have liked," he said. "You have to give Spain credit for the quality of their pressure. In some moments we passed it well, but we can do better in possession -- we have players who can be a bit more dangerous in attacking situations.
"We didn't always show that tonight, but we were playing Spain, who have won two of the last three major championships, and have got some very, very good players. Their pressure caused us to lose a bit of composure."
Asked whether England could bridge the gap and compete against Spain should they meet at next summer's Euro 2016 finals in France, Hodgson was coy.
"We'll have to see," he said. "The gap between England and Spain is in terms of Spain's style of play, very possession-based. Our style is more to get the ball forward on counter-attack and use that weapon.
"Can we match them with clever passing? Perhaps we can't, but you don't have to match that. We saw at the last World Cup it did not go well for them.
"We can analyse it and see what we need to do better. If I am kind to the 13 or 14 we had out there, they worked as hard as they can, and did not let me or coaching staff down at all. But to win the game we would have to do better."
When Hodgson was asked whether Friday night's tragic events in Paris might affect Tuesday's friendly against France at Wembley, FA press officer Mark Whittle interrupted to say it was too early yet to comment.
"The FA sends deep condolences to victims of the tragic event," Whittle said. "We will liaise with the French federation this weekend at an appropriate time."