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Hodgson never thought about quitting England

Roy Hodgson's contract with England expires in 2016 © PA Photos

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Roy Hodgson has revealed he never had any intention of standing down as England manager following their disappointing exit from the World Cup.

England suffered 2-1 losses to Italy and Uruguay and drew 0-0 with Costa Rica as they finished bottom of their group at the World Cup - tumbling at that stage of the tournament for the first time since 1958.

Hodgson said at the time he would not resign, and two months on from events in Rio has revealed quitting his managerial post was something he was never going to do.

Hodgson drops Rooney captaincy hint

• Roy Hodgson says he has "half chosen" who his next England captain will be.
• Steven Gerrard retired from international duty, and Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard are the favourites to take over the captaincy.
• However, Hodgson has yet to pick his new captain, but the identity of who will wear the armband permanently will be unveiled in the friendly against Norway in September.
• "Frank is the vice-captain and there is Wayne Rooney so there are two candidates," Hodgson said, who was then asked if he knew who his next captain would be and whether they had been told.
• "Yes to the first part and no to the second," he said.
• "I have half chosen him. The person who is captain for the Norway game will be the person I will be designating to hopefully be the captain in 2016.
• "At the moment, Frank's concentration has to be on this Manchester City job and in New York, where he could very well be captain.
• "I don't think I can expect him to say 'please make me captain because in 2018 I want to lead the team out', because I don't think he will be thinking that himself.
• "But having said that, if he is with us in the first game, who knows. Then he could captain us that day."

"There has been plenty of dark moments. Plenty of times after looking back on things that you can't believe fate has put you in that sort of situation," Hodgson told Sky Sports.

"The fact is I would quite happily relinquish this job when my employers don't want me here anymore and the players don't have the respect necessary and that they don't want to continue to play or me. In that moment if it is time for me to walk away, I will do so.

"But this time, it was made clear to me that wasn't the situation, that the FA wanted me to continue in the job and the feedback within the team was the same. So therefore there was never any doubt in my mind that I shouldn't continue.

"You only walk away when, A, you can't stand the pressure or, B, that you don't feel that you are good enough to do the job and in that situation, I can safely and strongly say that I never felt that at all."

Hodgson admits he feels "great disappointment" over England's tournament and admits they suffered from bad luck rather than form.

"I thought the players were very focused and everyone was so committed to doing very well and we honestly believed we could [do well]," he said.

"We lose the first game and in my opinion, a little bit unluckily. We certainly played well enough and deserved more. Sadly we go into the second game and things are going okay and we got ourselves going.

"In the second half, we see a bad goal conceded and somewhat a freakish goal and suddenly you've lost two and you're out of the competition before we've even started. It was a bitter blow and it's going to take more than a couple of months to come out of that."

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