Wayne Rooney international retirement: With or without Roo...
PROBABLY the person least surprised by Wayne Rooney’s retirement from international football was Martin O’Neill. After all, Rooney’s new club gaffer is O’Neill’s good buddy, Ronald Koeman.
I jest, of course. Well, kind of. Rooney did say that he discussed his decision with the Everton boss, but, while the Dutchman has insisted it was entirely the player’s call, I would much doubt that he tried to twist his arm into giving it one last, big go with the Three Lions.
Still, even if the old-school romantics among us like to cling to the outmoded ‘you-don’t-stop-till-you-drop’ approach to playing for your country, there’s no reason to doubt Rooney’s explanation that what seems like a coldly pragmatic decision was, indeed, a “really tough” one for him to make, nor to question the sincerity of his assertion that playing for England had “always been special” to him.
119 caps, and a record-breaking 53 goals, testify to the enormity of his contribution, yet the deserved paeans of praise this week have almost all come with the equivalent of an asterisk, one to which Rooney himself appended the most telling footnote, when he admitted: “One of my very few regrets is not to have been part of a successful England tournament side.” And there’s the sad truth of it: Rooney gave more to England than England gave to him. And, sadder still for our friends in Blighty, at the end of it all neither was able to give enough.
Rooney will have to take his share of the responsibility for such serial failure, along with a host of other golden names on the pitch, as well as a succession of managers lacking in the Midas touch.
But, me, I put most of the blame on 1966, and all that.
Having done it once, albeit on home soil, England should have been emboldened to do it again, but, once they’d been dethroned by an incomparable Brazil, in Mexico, four years later, a glorious legacy seemed to be transformed, almost overnight, into a crucifying burden, and one which has only grown more intolerable with the passage of 51 years of hurt, and counting.
Rooney’s own tournament experiences mirrored that downward curve, from the giddy promise of his explosive arrival at Euro 2004, in Portugal — during which he scored four goals, before succumbing to injury — via the diminishing returns of three World Cups and two further Euros, and culminating in the abject humiliation of his being a member of the side dumped out of Euro 2016 by Iceland.
Indeed, that ignominious 90 minutes, on its own, was almost like a condensed and speeded-up version of his England career, with Rooney setting his team on their way to what was assumed to be certain victory, with a penalty, only for Iceland to equalise within two minutes, before famously winning 2-1.
Ten years earlier, I’d been present in Gelsenkirchen to see, first-hand, a classic example of England — and Rooney — self-destructing on the big stage as, for the second tournament in succession, Portugal inflicted penalty shoot-out heartbreak on their opponents.
But whereas, in 2004, injury had forced Rooney out of the Euro quarter-final against the Portuguese, this time he’d overcome the dreaded metatarsal to play his part in getting England to the same stage of the World Cup, against the same opponents.
But, as I wrote at the time, for all the concern in the build-up to the tournament about how Rooney’s foot might stand up to the tackle, the story of his, and his country’s, exit turned out to be about how someone else’s tackle would stand up to Rooney’s foot, his stamp on Ricardo Carvalho’s nether regions earning him a red card and that notorious wink from Ronaldo, before, in time-honoured fashion, the 10 Lions blew their shot at redemption from the penalty spot.
Indeed, the more you consider the lowlights reel of Rooney’s tournament experiences with England, the easier it is to understand why, even though he has yet to turn 32, the thought of hanging on in there, until Russia, in 2018, might well have induced nightmares rather than dreams of glory.
On a visit to Dublin after the Euros last summer, Harry Redknapp touched on the psychological dimension.
“I think there’s got to be a way of taking the pressure off the players,” he said. “Something happens to them when they get into a pressure situation. We walk through the qualifying group, but, as soon as it comes to the crunch of a real knockout game, we’re gone. Maybe they need to find a way of relaxing. Even silly things. Build a bit more team spirit, give them a bit of down time, and not put them under so much scrutiny. To play football, you can’t go out uptight every time you play. And that’s what we seem to be doing.”
Redknapp cited the 1996 side, under Terry Venables (whose brush with glory, once again, took place on home soil) as something closer to the desired template. That all ended in tears, too, of course — especially for Paul Gascoigne — but not before a superb team had been taken to the hearts of the nation in a way that no English side, with or without Roo, has since managed. For Rooney, England’s most naturally gifted footballer since Gazza, that’s the darkest shadow on a stellar career, which, even now, holds out the promise of an Indian summer back at his boyhood club.
But, just think, it could all have been so different, had he opted, under the ‘granny rule’, to declare for the Republic: that way, a great player would unquestionably have joined the ranks of the immortals.
Once again, I jest, of course. Well, kind of.
