Welcome back, then,
Wayne Rooney.
Captain, goalscorer, chief creator and senior man. Little wonder,
perhaps, that Rooney, in his latest incarnation as international
factotum-in-chief, found himself surrounded by at least four
San Marino
players pretty much every time he picked up the ball at Wembley on a
night of unrelenting and often monotonous attack versus defence.
As
England
wrestled awkwardly at times against opponents who defended with some
resilience for the entire 90 minutes, it was Rooney who provided the
game's most encouraging moments, most notably in scoring twice in a 5-0
victory to reach 31 England goals, putting him fifth in the all time
scoring charts behind Michael Owen, Jimmy Greaves, Gary Lineker and
Bobby Charlton.
This was some way short of the bravura display of
attacking generalship Roy Hodgson might have been hoping to draw from a
player who remains, more so than for any of his previous England
managers, a rather smudged and dog-eared trump card. But there was some
small encouragement to be taken here on what was – as is customary for a
man whose England career threatens to disintegrate into a succession of
comebacks – another comeback of sorts. Injured against the Ukraine at
Wembley last month and peripheral in the Ukraine this summer, England's
stand-in captain had spoken with some maturity during the week about the
need to show maturity, shown leadership on the issue of leadership and
generally talked up his own credentials as a sober head among the
current tyro squad.
This was a team set up to play to his
strengths. After the variations on 4-4-2 that have been the template for
'Early Hodgson', England lined up in a fashionable 4-2-3-1 formation,
with Rooney in the middle of the three, performing a hard-running,
hyperactive, anglicised variation on the No10 role. From there he went
pretty much where he wanted in a skewed first-half of occasionally
frantic, occasionally meandering attack against blanket defence. It was
Rooney's early hooked pass over his shoulder into Theo Walcott's path
that created the first chance after six minutes, Walcott failing to
reach the ball but finding himself felled inside the area by San Marino
goalkeeper Aldo Simoncini's scandalous flying body-check assault, which
should have brought both a penalty and a red card.
Still Rooney
continued to drift in search of space against opponents ill-equipped to
follow his movement, instead adopting a shifting wall of blue around the
edge of their own area, not so much zonal defence as the Saturday
afternoon in Sainsbury's approach, forming a dense blockage across a
narrow band of the Wembley turf that stifled England's attempts to play
the kind of neat, penetrative short-passing football that, in truth,
often eludes them.
The game's first corner after 12 minutes saw
Rooney skim a header narrowly wide when he should have scored. And so he
began to drop deeper, often an indication that all is not well, and,
for some, a sign that he lacks the patience to exploit some of the more
soft-pedalled aspects of the second striker's role: the refusal to be
drawn to the ball, the ability just to stand still for a bit now and
then.
England, for all their perspiration, were getting closer,
and the pressure duly told as Danny Welbeck was tripped by Simoncini
receiving the ball after a fine angled-run inside the area. Rooney took
the penalty the way likes to – hitting it with power to the goalkeeper's
right and using his instep to find the corner. Wembley, for all the
false starts, the trapped revs, the spluttering on the launch pad of his
middle years, still loves him, and briefly the chants of "Roo-ney!"
rang around from all sides.
Albeit, Rooney could scarcely have
hoped for more accommodating opposition. There is a fair case to say San
Marino, joint-bottom of the Fifa rankings, are probably the worst team
he has ever played against (Crawley, Exeter and Shrewsbury would fancy
their chances) and in truth two goals here confirmed that Rooney has
become something of a Hammer of the Minnows at international level. In
the last four years he has scored against Kazakhstan Belarus, Slovakia,
Andorra Croatia Switzerland Bulgaria and Ukraine, while only two of his
29 goals overall have come against opponents currently in Fifa's top-10.
For
now, though, never mind the quality. As San Marino wearied in the
second-half, the thick blue line dropping deeper and deeper, Rooney
continued to play wherever his instincts took him. His second goal was
an agreeably explosive affair; a loose ball sent curling low into the
far corner, to take him clear of Nat Lofthouse, Sir Tom Finney and Alan
Shearer in the all-time stakes.
Only San Marino, perhaps, but for
Rooney the night had a rehabilitative feel. Poland will provide a far
sterner test in Warsaw, but as he left the field to a standing ovation
here there was still a sense, dimly, of a first significant step taken
under his fourth full-time manager for England's new junior senior man.
