Roy Hodgson intends to step up penalty practice ahead of England's Euro 2012 quarter-final with Italy.

England have crashed out of major tournaments on spot-kicks on five occasions since the devastating World Cup semi-final defeat to Germany in 1990. They were only successful once during that time against Spain at the last eight stage of Euro 96.

"We have used the time after training sessions to regularly practice and we'll obviously take it even more seriously now," said Hodgson.

"But you can practice penalty shoot-outs until the cows come home, it's really your composure, your confidence, your ability to really block everything out and forget the occasion that means you score or don't.

"Sometimes we've seen the best players miss and the ones you think are not penalty takers are the ones that smash them in."

In the current squad only Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney are regular penalty-takers for their clubs and both have had periods where they failed to score from the spot.