I love Wayne Rooney. Love is probably a bit strong, I like him a lot. Well I don’t actually know him personally well enough (or at all) to judge such a matter accurately so it’s probably even better to say that I love him in a non-specific objectifiable way - much like the way I love pasta, or cheese, and about the same amount too - maybe slightly more. I’d be willing to bet a fair bit that many of you (the lovely readers) probably love him too – about as much as you love pasta, or cheese, or whatever else you love if you’re weird enough to dislike either of those amazing stables of my diet.

He’s the golden boy of English football, the boy has taken over from the balls and it’s impossible to imagine a world without our wonderful Wayne. Like Gazza, Owen and Beckham before him, he carries the hopes of a nation on his freckly shoulders as we wait for the summer, hoping there’ll be enough drama and triumph in South Africa to inspire a future film adaptation with Matt Damon as Rooney and Morgan Freeman as Morgan Freeman.

However the media love in with Rooney has become a bit of a bugbear for me. It’s not that I don’t like or agree with it, it’s much better than their usual default setting of “destroy”, but as is always the case with the English press and talented footballers, we’re into the realm of discussing what he will and can do well before he’s actually done it. The latest development in the Rooney saga is that he’s officially now allowed to be called world class - apparently. The thing is though, he’s actually been world class for about 7 years now. He was world class when he tore up Euro 2004 and world class when he scored a hat trick on his debut for Manchester United. He was probably world class when he chipped Neville Southall as a precocious 11 year old Everton mascot, he’s just been through various peaks and troughs of form. What he isn’t yet, is a player who has single handedly won England the World Cup. He may be one day, but as with Beckham before him (even though Becks was never that type of player), we’re all being encouraged to believe that Rooney can single handedly bring us glory because he’s playing really well at the minute and hasn’t broken his foot of gone bonkers at a referee for a while. But flashback 6 months, and Rooney was going through a rather lean spell of form. He was scoring the odd tap in but not performing to the heights he was in his youthful heyday. There were murmurings that he was missing Ronaldo, or that he didn’t have what it takes to fill his shoes, but then – wallop - 4 goals against Hull, a brilliant performance against Arsenal and the match winners in the San Siro and suddenly he’s Gazza mark 2 without the madness again. Then as quick as you can say “blip”, a peripheral performance against Everton and there’s talk of a burnout once again.

I’d be a massive hypocrite if I didn’t say I was prone to these egregious proclamations as well, I thought his occasional lapses in form were to do with his body aging at a faster rate than most 24 year olds – silly ey? - but what I’m slowly coming to believe is that heavily building up our prodigal players is just as bad as viciously knocking them down. Theo Walcott has struggled to live up to the rather premature hype thrown his way after the World Cup 2006 debacle and encouraging Rooney to believe he’s going to win us the World Cup in the future and collect the Ballon D’or in the process can only have one positive outcome from the myriad of different, more likely outcomes of this – and other - summer sporting showpieces. To put it bluntly, when we don’t win the World Cup, it will all be Rooney’s fault for not playing well enough.

Sir Alex Ferguson - the man who works with Rooney day in day out, -has said that he still doesn’t consider him as good a finisher as Andy Cole or Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, but believes he will be soon. This is the crux of the matter, he’s getting there, but he’s not there yet. He’s world class, but he’s not the best player in the world, or even the best striker. He’s not Diego Maradona or Fat Ronaldo, he’s still our Wayne and the uber love is causing us to get slightly ahead of ourselves. His 2 goal salvo against Milan was the stuff Ballon D’or’s are made of, but only the foundations. To be at that level you need to do it again in the Quarter’s, or the Semi’s or (as is increasingly becoming the requisite) the Final itself. Rooney has been quiet in both European Cup finals he’s played in. He’s been relatively quiet in both FA Cup finals too. In fact only the FA Cup semi against Watford and the first leg of the CL semi against Milan two years ago are important latter stage games of big competitions where Rooney has been the main man we expect him to be. So I think we should let him do that first before we start claiming he’s already reached his potential or crediting him with things he hasn’t done yet but surely will do.

Rather than encouraging us all and him to believe he’s destined to do it, why don’t we just let him get on with his business and if he does, then we can all start praising him like we should and get back to the serious business of working out who Morgan Freeman could possibly play in a film about England’s World Cup triumph.