After finishing second behind Ingebrigtsen in the 5,000m at last summer’s outdoor championships in Rome, Mills once again had to settle for silver behind the Norwegian, who has now won 16 European titles across all surfaces and championships.
Ingebrigtsen surged in front with two-and-a-half laps to go and although Mills made a brave attempt to keep up, the Briton faded in the last 100m.
“I thought 400m was a bit early for Jakob to defend and I thought I could get him on the final straight, but he pulled away,” Mills told BBC Sport.
“Anything less [than silver] and I would have been really disappointed.”
Mills’ father, former England footballer Danny, said watching from the sidelines was “like watching a penalty shootout time and time again”.
“I’ve got sore hands again from banging the boards. It’s tough, but he gave it absolutely everything,” he added.
Courtney-Bryant improved on the bronze medals from each of her previous two European Indoors, but admitted she was “gutted” to miss out on gold.
“I went hard down the back straight and felt I had another gear,” she said. “But then my legs just went beneath me. But Sarah ran really well, I am really happy for her.”
Courtney-Bryant’s GB team-mates Hannah Nuttall and Innes Fitzgerald finished sixth and eighth respectively.
Alex Haydock-Wilson, Efekemo Okoro, Joshua Faulds and Alastair Chalmers ran a season’s best 3:05.49 but could only finish fourth in the men’s 4x400m relay behind the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium.
Morgan Lake finished fifth in the women’s high jump, while Amy Hunt finished sixth in the women’s 60m.
Britain finished third in the medal table two years ago and needed at least one more gold to have any chance of matching that.
But their final position of seventh means they have finished outside the top three in the overall medal standings for the first time in seven editions of the European Indoors.
The team won three golds among six medals overall in 2023, but title-winners Keely Hodgkinson, Laura Muir and Jazmin Sawyers were all absent this time around.
Georgia Hunter Bell came in as GB’s big hope of gold but suffered huge disappointment in the women’s 1500m final, while world indoor pole vault champion Molly Caudery was a late injury withdrawal.
