ROONEY ON BORROWED TIME
Southgate defends England’s captain, but the end is near
TOO nice to be the England manager? On Saturday night at Wembley Gareth Southgate appeared anything but. He was calm, articulate, and very much at ease in his new surroundings. He was confident enough, too, to take a swipe at the England fans who baffled him with their abuse of Wayne Rooney.
He actually credited Rooney, quite rightly, for being among those players who always make themselves available to England when others have gone into hiding the moment the going gets tough; 117 caps says it all.
But Southgate showed remarkable sangfroid and such an approach might just make him more suited to the role than some believe.
Sam Allardyce was bursting with pride when he began his all too brief tenure in charge of the national team and one halfexpected Southgate to be similarly high- spirited when he slipped on the official FA suit for his first encounter at the helm.
He said he was ‘immensely proud’, of course. But he also said he ‘wasn’t too romantic about it’ and it was encouraging to hear him talk with such cold professionalism about what had to be quite a day for the former England defender.
‘I wasn’t here to be a tourist,’ he said. ‘I was here to do a job for the country. I picked up a situation last Tuesday that would have been unenviable for anybody.
‘The key was to provide some stability, the second part of the week was to provide a way of playing and start dripping it into the players; the belief I want them to play with.
‘I knew there was a job to be done. I was immensely proud, but I was aware of the responsibility and I wanted the players to get a sense of how we wanted to do it. And at times I felt the players did that and at other times we know there is room for improvement.’
There’s no doubt about that. Decent first-half goals from Daniel Sturridge and Dele Alli is hardly the most impressive return against a side of Malta’s quality.
And it was not long before the conversation with Southgate returned to the subject of Rooney and his England future.
Allardyce opted to keep Rooney on as England captain because he was smart enough to realise a young squad so badly wounded by European Championship defeat by Iceland needed the 30-year- old’s leadership and experience. And Southgate clearly agrees, as the recovery process continues.
It did not sound like he was planning to omit Rooney for tomorrow’s game against Slovenia either. It would not make much sense after picking him for Malta.
But Rooney’s deployment in a deep midfield role ahead of Eric Dier is unsustainable when a player of the Tottenham midfielder’s youth, athleticism and defensive instincts will be required against better opposition, and perhaps as early as next month’s friendly against Spain, by which time England should be sitting with maximum points from their opening four World Cup qualifiers and thankful of Rooney’s guidance.
Southgate could, of course, push Rooney further forward again, but instead of whom? Alli represents the future in Rooney’s favoured No 10 role and players like Jordan Henderson and Jesse Lingard also have a dynamism their skipper sadly no longer possesses.
The fact is, Rooney’s exclusion is a situation that will evolve naturally, with Southgate’s decision likely to be made easier by circumstances at Manchester United where Rooney has not started a game since the 3-1 League Cup win at Northampton Town on September 21. As the interim England manager said prior to the Malta match: ‘I think the longer a situation goes where you are not playing with your club, it becomes more difficult.’
Southgate was supportive of Rooney on Saturday night. ‘I was very pleased with his performance,’ he said, adding that he felt ‘the role
he was asked to play he fulfilled’. He also made the point, and Rooney deserves credit for this, that in spite of United manager Jose Mourinho he remains ‘a captain who is desperate to lead on and off the field and continues to make an outstanding contribution to that group of players’.
‘What’s happening at Manchester United for this week is not as important,’ he said. Rooney, he added, continues to ‘command respect’. But then came the clear message that omitting him was not a decision Southgate would shy away from; not something that he would leave for someone else, should the FA decide after his four-game audition that they want to search for a new boss.
Asked to reveal the ‘biggest’ call he had to make, Southgate delivered a chilling, telling response. ‘Making some really close friends redundant,’ he said. ‘That’s probably as big as you can get.’
So telling Rooney he is picking Dier ahead of him? Should he chose to do it, that will not be a problem.