Rooney's dismissal turning point in game, says fuming Eriksson

Jul 1, 2006, 21:47 GMT

Gelsenkirchen - A deflated Sven-Goran Eriksson said Saturday after his England side crashed out on penalties to Portugal in the quarter-finals of the World Cup that the second-half dismissal of Wayne Rooney was the pivotal moment in the game.

Rooney saw a straight red in the 60th minute for stamping on Ricardo Carvalho, handing the initiative to Luiz Felipe Scolari's free-passing Portuguese side. The Manchester United striker's moment of frustration clearly had Eriksson fuming.

'I'm sad and a little bit angry because we should be in the tournament,' he said.

'We can't blame the referee or anyone else. We are out of the tournament because we failed on a couple of occasions and I'm not talking about occasions to score although we did that too.'

Eriksson, who felt everything 'went to plan until 10 or 15 minutes into the second half', said he was convinced England would prevail until Rooney was dismissed.

'If you asked me 10 minutes into the second half who was going to win the game I would have said absolutely England,' he said. 'It looked like that but unfortunately things changed.'

The match finished scoreless after 120 minutes of football but Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher all missed penalties in the shootout, handing Cristiano Ronaldo the honour of becoming the toast of Portugal when the United star rifled home his spot kick.

'It's not good enough to miss three penalties out of four,' admitted Eriksson after his final match in charge of England.

'To get over this result will take a long time. I was convinced that we had a team that could reach the final. We still have but we are out unfortunately.'