England's devastated players huddled together in the dressing room after last night's penalty shoot-out defeat against Portugal and vowed to make up for it in two years' time.

The team spirit shown in this tournament has been incredible and defender Terry believes the squad is good enough win a major trophy, even if luck wasn't with them in Lisbon yesterday.

He said: "We believe we could have won this competition. The only side we really feared was France and we wanted to beat them in the final. But we're not there so we're very, very unhappy.

"To be honest we're devastated, it was an awful way to go out of the competition. We felt we did enough to go through but just didn't have that bit of luck. We thought it was going to be our night but they had that little bit of luck and we didn't.

"It's very disappointing for me but I've got youth on my side. Hopefully I can bounce back and win a major trophy for my country. We want to go and win the World Cup now - we're capable of doing that and this tournament brought everyone a lot closer together.

"That's what we said after the game - that we can go on and do that next time."

Terry was one of England's heroes on a night when they came agonisingly close to reaching the semi-finals of the European Championship.

He set up Frank Lampard's last-ditch equaliser in extra-time and then converted a penalty in a tense and dramatic shoot-out, in which players from both sides blamed misses on loose turf around the penalty spot.

He said: "I was going to be number five, six or seven but the boss came up to me and said you're fourth and I said no problem.

"Thankfully I scored but we did them in training the day before the game and the penalty spot wasn't great then. Every time one of the lads took a penalty we had to set down the turf before anyone else could take one.

"You can't blame the lads who missed. David Beckham and Darius Vassell showed a lot of guts to go up and take a penalty. David put his hand up to go first and there's no blame attached - he's still a world class player."

Terry is agreed, however, that it was a terrible and heartbreaking way to go out of a major tournament. But he believes he will look back on it in future and be proud of his part in England's campaign.

He said: "It's been a great experience for me. I missed the first game but I thought I did OK against Switzerland and after that I felt comfortable. Hopefuly I'll be part of the World Cup squad and I can help us win in Germany instead."