England manager Roy Hodgson has revealed he never considered handing Rio Ferdinand a last-minute Euro 2012 call-up.

Hodgson's decision to ignore Ferdinand and bring in Liverpool full-back Martin Kelly as Gary Cahill's replacement last week, after the Chelsea defender was ruled out by a fractured jaw, drew stinging criticism from the Manchester United defender's camp.

Ferdinand's representative Jamie Moralee branded the move "a disgrace", while former England stars Robbie Fowler and Sol Campbell both claimed the 33-year-old's omission was a direct result of John Terry's inclusion.

Campbell went so far as to say he would hand his caps back if it turned out race was a factor.

However, addressing the matter for the first time in Krakow, Hodgson said Ferdinand never crossed his mind as a potential replacement for Cahill.

"People think I looked at two players when Gary Cahill was injured and chose Martin Kelly," said Hodgson. "But there was never any question of that.

"Rio Ferdinand never came into consideration.

"I had my squad of 23. I knew, in Cahill's absence, who would probably be the starters and who would be the covering players.

"I wasn't going to bring in a player of Rio's age, class, background and experience to be a cover player."

In fact, Hodgson's first thought was Tottenham defender Kyle Walker, who has already been ruled out once by a broken toe, only to be told the injury had not healed.

Kelly was the next best option, and Ferdinand's status never changed that conviction.

"I made a decision, a very clear one, a very easy one," said Hodgson.

"The difficult decision was whether to take Rio in the original 23. That took a lot of soul-searching."

Hodgson has never truly explained why Ferdinand was left out of his initial squad.

At the time he used the catch-all "football reasons", which created a void that was filled mostly with conjecture about a potential conflict with Terry, even though Hodgson had insisted it did not come into his thinking.

Now, he says, it did. It just was not the decisive factor.

"I can't say it didn't occur to me," he said.

"I'm a football person. I work in football day in, day out. I don't live on the planet Mars.

"You can't expect me to say I didn't even give that a thought.

"But when you've played 81 times for your country, only a couple of times in the last few years and had a lot of injuries, those players don't go as travellers. They go as one of the first names on the team sheet.

"I had to be convinced that, if I was going to take Rio in my 23, he'd be one of the first names on the team sheet. I couldn't be convinced that would be the case."

It is true that Ferdinand had completed just two full England games in the past two seasons and had not featured for his country for an entire year.

The 33-year-old had been a mainstay at Manchester United this term, made it perfectly clear he had no problem being a bit-part player.

Hodgson did not view that as a tenable situation.

"I know there's been a debate, and you can hit me with every quote from Rio's people under the sun," he said.

"To tell him I wasn't including him was a tough call to make, one I didn't look forward to.

"As far as I'm concerned, it was done.

"Now I have to live, no doubt in this tournament and maybe for years ahead, with the fact people have said other things, his representatives have said other things. It is a fact of life.

"Of course I'd prefer people to be talking about something else. It hasn't affected our work, though.

"It's just one of those things I'm going to have to get used to quite a lot over the next few years."

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