Moaners are turning Wembley into home for the angry brigade
WILL it ever become fun again? Or have we now reached the stage where you go to Wembley if you want to be angry? Those questions need to be asked after England’s first home game of the season, the first time they have faced their public since the abomination that was Iceland in June. Given the circumstances, this was never going to be a happy reunion but groans and some booing following a win? Is that how bad things have become? On the train back to Marylebone Station, not long after Wayne Rooney had been subject to a smattering of derision after a shot cleared the bar, the mood was like you would expect on the daily commute to work. Gareth Southgate was picked apart by a father to a son for being ‘typical FA’; Rooney, another observer pointed out, was ‘finished’, while all around there were long faces. You could expect this reaction had England lost but why do so many now lambast victories? And on that point, why is Rooney being singled out? Yes, the light of his buccaneering youth is fading but does he really deserve this kind of treatment? He has never turned down national service, always tried his hardest to inspire the team. They showed his 10 best England goals, culminating in a wonder strike against Brazil in the Maracana in June 2013, on the big screen before the game. Surely a player who achieved so much and had that special ability deserves some respect? This is not an attempt to say Rooney played well or talk up this international into something it wasn’t. We call it an ‘international’ as you have a game only when two sides are competing. Malta, bar one late free-kick, showed no inclination to make Joe Hart work. So what the near 82,000 crowd watched was a 90-minute session of attack versus defence. Malta’s approach was to escape without too many wounds. They could consider it job done. Southgate could be forgiven if it felt like he had been transported back to an Under 21 fixture. He experienced this for three years, with teams lining up to stifle and frustrate in an effort to avoid humiliation. You don’t tend to see much excitement at that level — or against sides such as Malta. But is the situation now so bad that we don’t want to look for positives even when the result is good? How many young fans turned up starry-eyed at Wembley for the first time but left confused by the grumbling and chuntering even though their heroes had won? That can’t be right. A day at Wembley should, theoretically, be full of excitement and enjoyment. If this situation continues, with ambivalence and criticism rife, how can England ever hope to move on?