Rooney: a great talent that was never truly fulfilled

by Brian GLANVILLE

THE VOICE OF FOOTBALL - World Soccer, September 2017

It was a bitter irony that Wayne Rooney’s salient international career moment was frustrated by a crude Portuguese tackle in the 2004 European Championship quarter-finals in Lisbon. Till then Rooney seemed to be reaching the crescendo of his talent; the greatest seen of an English player since the doomed Paul Gascoigne. 

Now, with a record number of goals and a great profusion of caps, he has decided to retire from international football, returning to his local Everton team for which he had once been a sensationally precocious debutant. He had been only 16 when coming on at Goodison Park as a substitute against Arsenal and winning the match with a shot of phenomenal power and accuracy. 

Sven-Goran Eriksson, then England’s manager, ignored the cautious pleas of the Everton manager David Moyes and picked Rooney as a 17-year-old, first as a substitute against Australia and tiny Liechtenstein, then in a European qualifier against Turkey. 

For much of that game England were having very much the worst of it against a gifted Turkish side and were holding out with difficulty. It was Rooney who transformed things, not only as a striker but as an inspiration in midfield, winning the ball, sometimes even juggling with it, transforming an England team which ended with a 2-0 victory. Rooney went on to play splendidly in the finals the following year, the motor and architect of the English side, head and shoulders above every other England player, though even he could not save them in their opener against France when Eriksson’s negative tactics proved fatal. Against Switzerland, Rooney became the youngest player, at 18 years and seven months, to score in a European finals when he headed a goal. He would score again afterwards, remarking modestly: “I just go out to do well for the team.” 

Against Croatia he scored two more goals, which made Croatian coach Otto Baric remark: “A very good player but not a phenomenon. There are at least 10 players in Europe who can stop him” – to which Eriksson rejoined: “I don’t know who they are.” He then added Portugal wouldn’t want him as opposition in the quarter-final. But Portugal it would be and Rooney, alas, was doomed. 

In Lisbon after 27 minutes Rooney, already in fine form, was kicked in a tackle by Jorge Andrade and left the field with a broken bone in his foot. England would eventually succumb on penalties. 

This was arguably the apex of Rooney’s international career although there were so many caps and goals to follow. In Germany in the 2006 tournament he was shamefully exploited by Eriksson. Still recovering from a metatarsal injury, it had been assumed by his United manager Alex Ferguson that were he to play at all it would be only at the second stage of the tournament. Instead Eriksson irresponsibly threw him into England’s game against Trinidad & Tobago in Nuremberg. He came on for the last half hour. Against Sweden, Rooney lasted for 69 minutes largely marked by frustration. One saw the real gifted Rooney in the subsequent game versus Ecuador, in which he lasted the full match despite being alone up front. 

So to the quarter-final against Portugal in which Rooney, alas perhaps predictably and inevitably, finally did explode. He would last just an hour. Provoked by the Portuguese centre-back Ricardo Carvalho, he stamped on his opponent’s groin and off he went. 

Later, in a bad tempered game in the Balkans, he would get himself expelled again, against Montenegro, and missed a couple of matches in the subsequent European finals. Of his tremendous talents there was never any doubt, but he was hardly a role model on or off the field for aspiring youngsters.

The Eni Aluko mystery

The case of the much-capped England women’s international Eni Aluko, the sister of the gifted Reading striker Sone Aluko, continues to perplex me. Two investigations committees, one headed by a black female barrister, have rejected her insistence that she has suffered racist discrimination. Yet the Football Association has reportedly given her £80,000, with vague explanations which seemed on the face of it to amount to no more than wanting to calm the waters. 

But even in these hyperbolic times that is a lot of money and suggests that Ms Aluko indeed has or had a case. As a token gesture, £80,000 does seem significant, but if you cannot make head or tail of it, nor can I.

Board to blame for De Boer crisis

Is Frank De Boer already in peril after Crystal Palace’s dire start to the season? His attempt to change the team’s style to a more sophisticated possession kind hasn’t worked, but whose fault is that? 

When Palace appointed him manager, surely they had examined his preferred tactics, which worked at Ajax but hardly in Italy at Inter, where he was brusquely dismissed. A manager must cut his coat according to his cloth and it is palpable that De Boer hasn’t done that. 

But who is to blame? Hardly the players, who have been used to a more direct style. De Boer himself? Yet he has made no secret of the kind of tactics he prefers. The Palace board? Guilty as charged I would say, for they do not seem to have done their homework. Or if they had, have failed to draw the proper inference. 

Meanwhile, I remain baffled by the withdrawal from management of Sam Allardyce. He may be a controversial figure, but in his last spell at Palace he certainly didn’t seem to have lost his managerial competence and drive. 

Wenger cannot continue with this shambles 

The thrashing Arsenal endured at Anfield against a Liverpool team without its star turn Philippe Coutinho brought starkly into focus the question of why they clung on to Arsene Wenger as their manager. The past three seasons had all been deeply disappointing, despite FA Cup Final success, and the two 5-1 thrashings by Bayern Munich in last season’s European Cup surely told a tale of managerial failure. 

Indeed, for the first time in so many years, the Gunners failed to reach even fourth place in the Premiershp, meaning that they were consigned to the secondary European competition. 

Last May, in a defiant interview, Wenger ridiculed the idea that a director of football should be placed alongside him. He proclaimed that he and he alone should be in charge. A docile board, defying the demands of thousands of the club’s own fans, duly gave him another two-year contract. 

When Liverpool walked all over Arsenal at Anfield, a team which for all its prowess in attack had been criticised for its failings in defence, the Gunners could not even muster a shot on goal. The belated return of Alexis Sanchez was of negligible value; he would be substituted after an anaemic display. 

By one of the ironies common in football, and goodness knows I have been subject to them myself, Aaron Ramsey, the team’s Welsh international midfielder, had given a long Sunday interview in which he had eulogised the club’s use of a three-at-the-back formation. In the event, the Gunners’ defence looked pitifully porous while Ramsey himself was over-run in midfield. 

Arsenal’s passive board have brought all this on themselves. Having reinstated Wenger with a new contract in the close season against all logic and good sense, they now find he had no intention to resign and none of allowing himself to be flanked with a managerial assistant. Were he to be sacked at this early stage of his new contract it would be hugely expensive for the club. 

Perhaps the only recourse might be to appoint a managerial assistant, ignoring his protests, leaving Wenger the bleak choice between soldiering on under protest or walking out on a club for which he has beyond doubt done so much, but which has a team which no longer responds to his tactics or selection.