BANISH EURO CHILL
Rooney says England must make up for Iceland horror
WAYNE ROONEY has urged England to right the wrongs of their horrific Euro 2016 campaign.
The national side play for the first time since their embarrassing last-16 loss to Iceland in France as they get their 2018 World Cup qualification campaign under way here in Slovakia tonight.
And Rooney, who will earn his 116th cap tonight, breaking the outfield appearances record he currently holds with David Beckham, says it’s time for England to put their lamentable time in France behind them.
‘The last game for us was Iceland and it ended in great disappointment, so it’s important to get back out there,’ said Rooney. ‘After the [2014] World Cup, the first game back against Switzerland gave us a huge amount of confidence to go through the [Euro] qualification campaign unbeaten and into the tournament.
‘It’s a chance to do that again, to look forward rather than back. The players are looking forward. We’re a close group. We talk to each other every day. Since we’ve met up, it’s been about the game rather than looking back. You can always look back and wonder what might have been if we’d done things differently, but it’s not going to change. We have to look forward.’
Meanwhile, Rooney, who revealed last week that he will retire from internationals after the World Cup campaign, admits there will be a tinge of disappointment if he hangs up his boots without a trophy.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever look back and say it was a waste,’ he said. ‘But, the reason you come and play for England is to try and win.
‘I wouldn’t sit here and say I’d be happy going for another two years and then going home after the group stage or last 16.
‘You want to try and win it. You have to have that hope and belief. I believe in the players we’ve got.
‘There’s still that excitement of trying to be successful with England which drives me on.’
THERE was some glorious late summer sunshine to accompany England’s training at St George’s Park last week.
Coaches Sammy Lee and Craig Shakespeare buzzed around the FA’s national football centre, delivering enthusiastic instructions while the players looked sharp and impressive in training, but then relaxed and engaged when signing autographs for fans.
Raheem Sterling and John Stones goofed around, having a keepy-uppy competition, the centre-half coping easily with the challenge. And Sam Allardyce presided over it all, looking proud as you might imagine.
Yet England always start their new campaigns amid metaphorical sunshine before the gloom of autumn envelops them. Usually England managers end their careers in a dark place.
The only men to buck that trend would be Bobby Robson in 1990 and perhaps Terry Venables in 1996, and even then, only England among the major football nations could dress up semi-final defeats as some kind of achievement.
Allardyce’s team to start against Slovakia today indicated what most already new: there will be no revolution, no big new idea of substance. For all the talk of comedians bringing more fun to the camp, for all the positivity from players speaking nicely about their new boss, who has power over their international futures, nothing has changed since the summer.
And for England, nothing has really changed for the best part of 60 years.
The cycle always starts like this. Robson was the coming, dynamic man to replace the conservative Ron Greenwood, until he endured his own humiliations and headlines screaming: ‘Go in the name of God!’
Graham Taylor was similarly modern and even introduced catering for the media at press conferences to strike a new mood; much good it did him when Ronald Koeman chipped in that free-kick to prevent him qualifying for the 1994 World Cup finals. Did he not like that!
Venables said he would let the players play, and to an extent he did; Glenn Hoddle was meant to con- tinue in that style, performed impressively but was overwhelmed by the job’s politics and his infamous comments on the disabled.
Kevin Keegan was Messianic at the outset, but all too human at the end.
Sven-Goran Eriksson brought the whiff of continental sophistication but was a laughing stock at the finale. Steve McClaren, chosen above Allardyce, hailed a bright, new era of English coaches ... and lasted 18 months. Fabio Capello was the fail-safe option, a genuine worldclass coach made to look a befuddled, out-of-touch has-been by England.
Roy Hodgson’s new regime had similar pronouncements about bringing back the fun, making it more like a club team spirt. There were city centre hotels in Krakow, Rio and Chantilly. Players being allowed to leave the confines of the team hotel to have a pizza was hailed as a new era of openness; a cappuccino in Krakow’s historic town square indicated the regressive days of Capello’s boot camp were over. New regimes always grasp at insubstantial detail to indicate their distinctiveness.
But it will take more than wisecracking Paddy McGuiness and Bradley Walsh to elicit a genuine change.
There is a collective psychological phenomenon that enables us to greet new management as a panacea for old failings. It’s what we all want to believe. And while Allardyce deserves support and like any decent manager, needs to harness as much of the feel-good factor as he can, England are a team who have not shown signs of life for years.
Shortly before Euro 2016, Gary Cahill was quizzed about the forthcoming tournament. It was put to him that, despite the record qualifying campaign, all that really mattered were results in France.
Hodgson could not contain himself. He interrupted, somewhat hurt that his impressive qualifying stats were being so lightly dismissed.
And one level, he was right. It is not easy, whatever people think, to win in Switzerland, Estonia and Slovenia. It might be expected, but executing the result requires a good coach and a team plan. However, essentially Hodgson was wrong. He will never be remembered as the England coach with the best qualifying record; he is the man who could not get out of a World Cup qualifying group and who lost to Iceland.
England’s problems in the Seventies, in 1994 and in 2008 might have been qualifying, but really, other than the McClaren blip, that has not been the issue for the national team in recent times. It is the collective psychological meltdowns in major tournaments that Allardyce needs to address.
Olympic swimming gold medallist Adrian Moorhouse’s company, Lane4, have been at St George’s Park working with the team and it is encouraging that Allardyce is embracing outside help to identify why England seemingly have no spirit on the pitch.
Prior to France, all the talk was that the camp were relaxed, that a darts tournament was a welcome distraction and that the players genuinely liked each other. Yet what-
ever bonds had been established proved fragile when the heat was applied by Iceland. No one could stand up and take responsibility and the worst offenders were captain Wayne Rooney and Joe Hart, the most experienced players. For all Lane4’s expertise, Wales managed to create team spirit organically, their world-class player taking responsibility for setting a relaxed tone while delivering leadership on the pitch, Contrast that to Hart’s refusal to answer questions about a darts competition because he considered it a privacy issue; or his screaming ahead of games to demonstrate his passion — before conceding extraordinarily soft goals. Gareth Bale, with no experience on which to draw, judged how to lead a team in a major tournament perfectly. England lack such insight. They also lack a player of Bale’s class, though Aaron Ramsey apart, they are more blessed than Wales in general.
And in the wake of Iceland’s and Wales’s successes and Portugal’s Euro 2016 triumph, it is hard to argue that England do not have the quality to make an impact even if they have nobody like Cristiano Ronaldo or Bale to call upon.
They probably are not good enough or clever enough to win anything but that is no longer the benchmark. Just performing well and giving themselves a chance of success would be progress.
Ask Venables; they’re still making documentaries about his semi-final defeat.
The bar has never been set lower for England. All Allardyce has to do is entice them over it. The fact that it is no foregone conclusion demonstrates how low this team has sunk.