"To be the person who misses the penalty to potentially take you into a World Cup final is heartbreaking," Houghton tells FourFourTwo. "It wasn't like I wasn't confident it was just a s**t penalty. I was devastated not to make the final, but I do think that was one of my best tournaments for England in terms of consistency. I scored against Cameroon and defended really well against Norway."
"After that penalty miss, though, people's perceptions of me changed, no matter what I did or how I played. In every tournament, there's got to be a scapegoat. I could have quit international football and hid, but I didn't I just kept going."
"The morning after the semi-final, I'd hardly had any sleep and Phil [Neville] messaged to say, 'Can you come down?', I thought, I can't be bothered what's Phil going to say? But he said he had someone to speak to me. It was Beck."
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