What happened to Wayne?

Written just after England's qualifying defeat in Russia on 17 November

Wayne Rooney's volleyed goal against Russia was stunning in its simplicity and brutal in its execution. It was also a goal that evoked hope in English supporters. Hope that England would go on to clinch the win that would secure qualification for the European Championships, and hope that here, finally, Rooney was showing signs of growing into the player that he had threatened to become in that heady summer of 2004, and answering the critics who claimed that he was no longer worthy of his place in the national side.

Sadly, fate is rarely sentimental. England lost, and in a cruel twist it was Rooney himself who clumsily upended the Russian right-winger for the equalising goal. Rooney's eagerness to help his side out defensively was to ultimately cost them dear. For Rooney the goal-getting hero of 2004 read Rooney the defensive villain of 2007. His goal aside, his contribution was fitful, his partnership with Michael Owen once again anonymous. So where has it all gone wrong?

Before chairs are thrown from tables, it has obviously not gone that wrong. Rooney was a vital member of the United team that swept (for at least half the season) majestically towards the Premiership last season and helped to reignite the public's passion for a domestic game that had endured two seasons of Chelsea's unchallenged monotony. The problem, in so much as there is one, lies in the fact that his flashes of genius are now increasingly rare, so rare that even the most ardent United or England fan could no longer claim that Rooney is one of the Premiership's, let alone the world's, top players. Good? yes, Great?
no.

Whereas his teammate Cristiano Ronaldo goes from strength to strength and trick to trick, the byword for Rooney is now functionality. He possesses in abundance what his club manager Sir Alex Ferguson has always demanded from his players, a willingness to graft hard and for the team, as epitomised in that fateful moment in Moscow. He willingly fills in at left midfield when Ferguson persists with his controversially conservative 4-5-1 formation, and the audacious long-range efforts of old have disappeared to be replaced with sideways passes. He is most probably now a more mature and better all-round player than when he arrived at Old Trafford but at what cost has this been to his hopes of greatness?

Improving the allround game is such an unsatisfactory term in itself; just ask Jermain Defoe and Emile Heskey. While neither were as talented as Rooney, as young men both had the potential to be significant international players. Yet somewhere along the way, while developing their 'allround game', they misplaced the confidence and gumption to keep doing what had got them there in the first place. Heskey lost the ability to turn and drive at defences in the way that so terrorised the Argentinians at Wembley in 2000, while Defoe discarded the single-minded head-down scent for goal that marked him out as such a predator in his time at West Ham and early days at Tottenham. Both appear jaded by experience, and while injuries have led to a very different Heskey's temporary resurgence, Defoe remains in the doldrums, still searching for the fearlessness of his early career. For Rooney to go the way of these two would be criminal. He must seek to regain what marked him out as special before it is too late. It may already be so.

Where is the joie de vivre of the Rooney who scored a hat-trick on his Old Trafford debut, the audacity of the youngster who juggled the ball on his knee on his full England debut aged 17 against the uncompromising brutes of Turkey? It seems to have disappeared somewhere in a fireball of metatarsal injuries, constant press scrutiny and the relentless treadmill that is now the life of an international sportsman. The old anger is still there, but seems more borne of frustration at the diminishing of his powers than a healthy flame inside. Playing football appears far more of a job for Rooney than you would want it to be for a 21-year-old with theoretically well over a decade left at the top level. But then again Rooney is no ordinary 21-year-old, having already played 40 times for his country.

While in the past England managers have been criticised for not giving their most technically gifted players a run in the team (Hoddle, Barnes, Le Tissier), Rooney has suffered no such problem. Of course he brings more to the team as a whole than all three of them, but it looks increasingly like Steve McClaren persists with Rooney on the basis of what his prodigious gifts once promised to bring. It cannot be for his recent international form taken in isolation, which while by no means being derisory has not been good enough to warrant depriving the team of the tall striker that statistics prove Michael Owen needs along side him to score goals consistently. And that is what England need and have needed all through this qualification
campaign: Owen's goals.

Ironically, it was from Owen's unlikely and impressive leap that Rooney took the ball on his chest to give England the lead in Moscow. Sadly that was all that was seen of Owen of note on another night that he and Rooney notably failed to work in tandem. This might be forgiven in isolation, away from home on a plastic pitch in the cold of Russia, but cannot be when the same trend was in evidence against the fragility of the Estonians at Wembley four days earlier. Something, surely, has to give with the return of Emile Heskey and Dean Ashton.Heskey and Owen showed more chemistry in two games last month than Rooney and Owen have in three years, and this cannot be ignored any longer. But what a crime it would be, for the gifts of Rooney to be substituted for the brawn of the derided Heskey. At United, he fits seamlessly as part of a global ensemble cast of stars, but his country require more from him. The problem is that Rooney is no longer as we once knew him, and until he returns to that level, the team must come first.

Is it our fault we have to ask ourselves, the nitpicking media and the baying public? Has the culture we have created demanded Rooney's conformity because flair and genius is something the English rarely possess and so are naturally distrustful of? Would the English have tolerated the sporadic, inconsistent yet mesmeric genius of Gheorge Hagi and Enzo Scifo in the way of the Romanians and the Belgians? Not if the gradual assimilation into the ranks of the similarly talented
Joe Cole is anything to go by. For the grin of Ronaldinho and the wink of Cristiano Ronaldo read the grimace of Rooney, because he is English, born and bred in Toxteth, and what English sport cherishes most are blood and guts and heart and soul; you need only look to the England's Rugby players in Paris on Saturday to see that. What chance of greatness did Rooney ever stand in this framework?

To turn to cricket for a comparison, Kevin Pietersen was lauded when he first played for England because he displayed a very un-English (unsurprisingly for a South African) lack of fear of situation or reputation, qualities equally synonomous with Rooney at the start of his career. With Pietersen's boldness came risk, occasional failure, yet a bravado that captured the imagination of the public and prematurely did for the stodgy Graham Thorpe. As his career has progressed, for a number of reasons, including several media backlashes when things have gone wrong, he has tempered that bravado. Unadulterated showmanship has been replaced by relative circumspection. As his Test figures show, he is undoubtedly a better
all-round player for it, yet England fans have missed his devil-may-care attitude in the shortened forms of the game, where he has appeared confused by his change of identity. While cricket is technically a team game, there is a clear focus on the individual. Consequently, Pietersen has been able to showcase his improvement and sheer weight of Test runs mean few save the romantics rue his changes
in approach.

Unfortunately for Rooney, football works differently, and consequently his progression as a player has not been so clearly visible. He is a striker, and as such is judged ultimately not only on goals, but because of his reputation, spectacular ones. They have been few and far between of late, with significant goal droughts for United in Europe and England
in competitive fixtures. While he has broken both, such trends beg the question as to whether we have seen the best of him already at 21?

Only time will tell, but if so, perhaps we should not be greedy. For that one summer, the possibilites for Rooney and England were endless, the future was an open door. That is a rare and exceptional feeling, and he bestowed it upon a whole country in a way that no player had done since Gascoigne. At least he had the chance to stamp his genius on the international scene, unlike the unfortunate Robbie Fowler, whose best days were the preserve of the Kop and was washed up at 23, but would
have graced any field in the world before then. That may sound sacrilegious, but Michael Owen has never been the same player since he was voted European Footballer of the Year at a similar age in 2001, and arguably never the same since he too terrorised Argentina at the age of 18.

But this is not an international obituary; it doesn't have to be like that. Rooney is 21. The talent is clearly still there, waiting to come out. In his next match he will probably score a hat-trick of volleys from outside the area and I will happily eat my words. However, until then, until he rediscovers what made him England's Wayne Rooney in the first place, England and McClaren must let go of the past and pick a team that serves Michael Owen and will beat Croatia.