No prizes for guessing what the tone of the questions might be at the pre-match press conferences when Roy Hodgson’s England team meet up to play Italy in Bern in a friendly next week.

What can England learn from the Olympics ?

Manager Roy Hodgson no doubt will speak positively about the English players in the men’s GB team who lost to South Korea in the quarter-finals after a penalty shoot-out.

He will talk of the potential of Chelsea’s Daniel Sturridge and Ryan Bertrand and especially the promise of Manchester United midfielder Tom Cleverley. All enhanced their careers by the Olympic experience.

Doubtless he will also highlight the urgent need to improve psychologically and technically when it comes to penalties, too, considering his England side went out of Euro 2012, also in the quarter-finals, after yet another penalty shoot-out against Wednesday’s opponents Italy.

Yet all the above are peripheral to the key question: What can football learn from the Olympics?

The simple answer is humility.

Think of Sir Chris Hoy who overtook Sir Steve Redgrave’s haul of five gold medals amid scenes of euphoric bedlam in the velodrome and immediately insisted no-one could take away Redgrave’s legacy as Britain’s greatest Olympian.

Think of Jessica Ennis who fulfilled her role as Britain's golden girl with a stupendous performance in the heptathlon and prayed it would inspire children to take up the sport.

Think of Mo Farah who calmly but firmly riposted the notion of one interviewer who suggested his 10,000m gold would have meant more to him if he had won it for Somalia, the country of his birth, rather than his adopted Britain.

It is easy to become dewy-eyed and sentimental about a home Olympics when so many competitors have instilled pride in the Great Britain shirt with performances of courage, skill and great dignity.

Yet if any sport needed a blueprint for how its individuals should behave then London 2012 surely has supplied it.

Not just when Olympians have won but when they have lost too.

That is the real measure of a sportsman’s character.

No excuses from Rebecca Adlington when she lost her 800m freestyle title to a 15-year-old Katie Ledecky from the United States, just recognition that swimming’s young guns were too good and that her bronze medal was something to celebrate, not something to bemoan.

No excuses from 54-year-old show jumper Nick Skelton on Big Star when one stray pole three fences from home cost him a gold medal.

“Just one of those things, just got to keep going,” said Skelton philosophically after suffering a calamity spookily similar to the one which also cost him a medal in the individual event at Athens 2004.

It would be naive to believe everything in Great Britain’s team was rosy and Phillips Idowu turned up briefly at the Olympic Stadium to remind us that arrogance and angst are not the exclusive preserve of the football world.

So did the imbecile who threw a bottle on to the track just before the 100m final.

Yet, in the main, London 2012 has been everything sport should be.

Played hard and fair with passion and desire in front of packed, patriotic and well-behaved crowds.

The hope would be that somehow the respect, the grace, the general feeling of well-being and goodwill could be transfused into football when the new season in England kicks off with the Community Shield between Manchester City and Chelsea on Sunday.

Savour the Olympic spirit these last few days.

Football will soon return centre stage and sadly Jess and Mo and Bradley and Co will be little more than warm memories.

The fervent hope is that football has learned from London 2012. The reality might be quite different.