Wayne Rooney must start to take the bull by the horns

Football FanCast columnist Alex Rowland feels that Wayne Rooney needs to start taking the big games by the balls.

Does anyone remember Wayne Rooney? No not the one captaining England at the weekend; the one that bullied people in his teens at Everton, the one that shook the world at Euro 2004, the player that banged in a sensational hat-trick on his Manchester United debut.

Against Brazil in Doha at the weekend, Rooney wasn’t his previous dominating attacking best. He was the reincarnated version of ‘Roonaldo’; Sir Alex  Ferguson’s selfless, hard-working, track backing number 10. The trouble is that with United Ferguson has Ryan Giggs, Dimitar Berbatov, Paul Scholes et al to create something out of nothing. Fabio Capello’s problem is that, with Joe Cole still unfit, Rooney is by far his most creative and dynamic player. Well potentially anyway.

But the Rooney that so often turns up in the big games is a marginalised version. This season against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and Liverpool at Anfield Rooney has been looking for the ball whilst tracking back, closing down the opposition and holding the ball up. While these are admirable qualities for a striker they are a far cry from the all blue man monster that used to tear at the opposition at Goodison Park, or the 18 year old that barring a metatarsal break would surely have booked England’s place in the final of Euro 2004. Against Chelsea, the goal gaped a couple of times but he chose to pick out Giggs or Antonio Valencia; lesser finishers, and the move broke down. The old ‘Wazza’ would have sized up the goal and hit a thunderbolt that the keeper would do well to get out the way of.

The alarming realisation from Doha was that the second string is littered with sub international quality. Jermaine Jenas, Darren Bent and Shaun Wright Phillips aren’t good enough to go to South Africa; through first touch let alone anything else. The back four were poor and the only two players who presented a case for their world cup inclusion were Foster and Milner. The point being that this was a game that Rooney had to shine in to give England a chance of a result, but instead he was out wide and dropping back to look for the ball, and produced only one shot as he regularly looked for the less than impressive Bent.

The World cup looks like Spain and Brazil and a host of quarter finalists. France, Italy, Germany, England, Holland and Russia (when they qualify) have little between them. In order to go from the Sven Goran Eriksson respectable disappointment of the last eight to potential world champions, Wayne Rooney needs to wake up and start taking the big games by the balls. If not then England will return as ‘failures’ and the Capello support will evaporate.