"It has never hurt so much getting knocked out of a tournament. I've never felt this bad before.
"We've all suffered as a team and those of us who have been around for the last four or five tournaments are suffering more than ever.
"Maybe I'm just a naive Englishman but I genuinely believed we would get to the semi-finals and the final this time.
"And until Ronaldo's deciding penalty went in, nothing that happened during Saturday's game made me think any different.
"I never felt we weren't going to win the game. Even when we were down to 10 men, I couldn't see us losing.
"We were so confident going into the penalty shootout.
"We were so sure it was our time and we were going through. But we suffered again and now I don't have a clue what to say. I'm devastated.
"I find myself thinking that, surely, one day it will happen and England will win a tournament.
"Yet this doesn't seem like the right time to be saying that.
"I hope I'm around to play with these lads again in tournaments to come, because they are a good bunch of players and I think the best is still to come from the younger ones.
"I would like to hang around and play with them. I feel proud to have played with them over the last few years.
"There were performances out there on Saturday which just defied logic. Owen Hargreaves was incredible.
"Every single player gave everything and I'm not bragging about that. That's the least you should do when you play for England. But there was a bit more than ever in there.
"As a team, we haven't delivered. England have gone out of the World Cup in the quarter-finals again and that is not good enough.
"We know we'll be criticised when we get home. There always has to be a scapegoat when England lose.
"When it settles down, people will look at the tournament as a whole and say we didn't perform as we could have done.
"We knew before the tournament it would be down to make-or-break moments, that penalties were coming.
"You watch the Germans and they're the masters. When their game against Argentina went to a shootout, there was only ever going to be one winner. They've developed that winning mentality at those make-or-break moments.
"I thought we'd done the same thing. We had a confident group of lads going up to take those penalties.
"But Portugal missed two and we missed three. We've suffered again."