Liverpool striker Peter Crouch has blamed tiredness for England's penalty shootout exit to Portugal in Saturday's World Cup quarter-final in Gelsenkirchen.

After a goalless 120 minutes of football, England crashed out of the competition 3-1 on penalties following Wayne Rooney's dismissal.

The Manchester United star's red card ensured England were forced to play for an hour with only ten men, and that effort caught up with the players in the end, according to Crouch.

"I honestly felt exhaustion set in at the end against Portugal," he said. "We'd played quite a lot of the game with 10 men and I think we took the penalties in a tired way.

"Everyone worked so hard and I genuinely feel everyone had given everything by the time we had to take the penalties. That definitely showed in the penalties we had to take.

"We've come in for criticism in the past for not practising penalties but I can assure you, we'd been practising them all the time after going to Germany in early June - and before that.

"They had been going well in practice - but we were fresh then. We were in an empty stadium as well which is a different ball game to Saturday.

"When it goes to penalties it's a lottery and we came unstuck again on Saturday. It was a bitter blow to go out of the World Cup the way we did and afterwards a few of the lads were inconsolable."