Gary Neville continued his comeback from a calf injury in today's England training session and insists he is fit ahead of Saturday's World Cup quarter final with Portugal.

The Manchester United defender trained for the first time yesterday since suffering the setback a fortnight ago in the final session before the group match with Trinidad and Tobago.

Sven-Goran Eriksson had wanted to see if the 31-year-old suffered any reaction before deciding to include the player in his starting line-up against the Portuguese in Gelsenkirchen.

But Neville was back out on the training ground with his team-mates and looking in good shape for the last-eight battle.

Neville is especially keen to play in this tournament after missing the entire 2002 World Cup with a broken metatarsal.

"I am certainly more happy than I was a week ago. I have trained and I am available for selection," he said after training today. "It has been frustrating for me to be injured during the World Cup but that can happen to a football player.

"I am confident my calf is fully fit. I have trained in the last two games and there is no problem with the calf.

"The manager will make the decision and whatever he decides I would go along with even though I am desperate to play.

"I have been injured the last three matches and I have not enjoyed it and I hope I will be involved on Saturday because you don't feel part of it when injured."

The Old Trafford skipper also believes that the England team are much stronger than they were in Asia four years ago.

Neville continued: "If you go back four years to Japan, the humidity was higher but the experience of the team was less.

"Brazil at the time were an exceptional team and now we are playing Portugal in a better climate.

"We are four years down the line and we can do something very good at this tournament.

Neville, asked if Wayne Rooney holds the key to England progressing, added: "We are happy to have him (Wayne Rooney) back in the team. But there are a number of players who can prove to be the difference.

"We are a little stronger than we were four years ago. We have four or five players in the team that can affect the game and hopefully one or two will do that."

Neville also insisted the players were more concerned with the opponents than they were of the criticism back home.

He concluded: "We only respond when we come here to do the press conference - we don't talk about it in the hotel.

"Thankfully we don't get them (newspapers) in the hotel. We have enough to worry about facing Luis Figo, Cristiano Ronaldo and the other Portuguese players without wanting to talk about what you people are writing back home."

All 22 remaining members of Eriksson's squad are available for selection.