Wayne Rooney is surviving on reputation alone and needs to start pulling out performances to justify his place in the side.
There was a moment during the first half of Friday’s win against Peru which summed up Wayne Rooney’s dismal international form. A crisp, incisive pass from Adam Lallana ricocheted off Rooney’s boot like a spring-loaded medicine ball. The Manchester United striker’s efforts to make amends weren’t much better, with the 28-year-old struggling to retrieve the ball back, looking well off the pace.
The conundrum is this: a fit, firing-on-all-cylinders Wayne Rooney walks into any England team, in any era; a ‘rusty’ Wayne Rooney – as Roy Hodgson terms it – however, will struggle to get into today’s team – a transitional side littered with rough diamonds and exuberant youth.
England can ill afford to carry on bleeding the tired notion that Rooney’s value – whether 100% or not – is in his sacred ability to produce match-winning moments, the likes of which have engineered his seemingly untouchable status. It’s this faith in yesteryear that could well cost the Three Lions. In a World Cup, a number 10 gone missing is a creative void that will hurt England’s chances, no matter what his reputation.
Regardless of his displays in the final warm-up games against Ecuador and Honduras in Miami, Rooney is assured to make the starting lineup for the opener against Italy in Manaus. However, should the United forward fail against the Italians, then there is a real case for Hodgson to contemplate the unthinkable: dropping him.
This could be positive for two reasons: 1) It will allow the in-form Lallana to take a floating central role within the revolving front four, also paving the way for the dynamic Ross Barkley to slot into midfield – who would offer powerful running on the ball, the likes of which Rooney seldom does these days; 2) Dropping Rooney, even for a single game, might just provide the wake-up call he needs. As Joe Hart will testify, it did him no harm at all.
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