Rio Ferdinand has admitted he is embarrassed about England's early World Cup exit.

The Manchester United central defender was one of the few England players to emerge from the tournament with his reputation intact, but that is little consolation for the heartache caused by the quarter-final defeat against Portugal.

"I'm gutted. I genuinely went into this tournament believing that we would get to the semi-finals at least - and I would have been disappointed with that," Ferdinand told The Sun.

"It's embarrassing if I'm being honest. I was a bit embarrassed to set foot outside the door when I went shopping with my girlfriend Rebecca.

"If I was a fan I would be desperately disappointed. I would have expected more than what we gave them.

"We didn't do ourselves justice. Individually we have a lot of fantastic players but it's about being able to gel in all departments as a team and we didn't do that.

"The whole way through the tournament the thing that let us down was that we didn't finish teams off.

"It will take a long time to get over it. I expected so much and so did our support.

"The country always gets behind us so well. It's so frustrating we couldn't come home with the trophy everyone wanted."