Gambler Roy banks on a switch for Rooney
AFTER less than a week in Chantilly, Roy Hodgson appears to have become the biggest gambler in town, seemingly choosing the first game of this European Championship to try something completely different.
It might pay off against Russia this evening. It might be that, come tonight here in Marseille, Hodgson is being saluted as the first England manager to win the opening game of this competition.
But it will come, judging by the way he has organised his players in training this week, as a consequence of arriving at a solution that never appears to have occurred to him for the previous four years.
Clearly Hodgson abandoned his original plan, one that had Wayne Rooney at the centre of a three-man attack that included Harry Kane and Jamie Vardy, after a stuttering performance against Portugal last week.
But settling on a line-up that is expected to see Rooney sitting in midfield amounts to a fairly major diversion and something that perhaps should have been tried before now.
It also suggests that those scribbles on a piece of paper Ray Lewington was carrying earlier this week were more significant than some tried to make out. A training exercise it may have been but it had England’s captain in midfield.
Never in 111 appearances for England has Rooney played in midfield. Indeed, a quick scan through England’s 21 matches since the last World Cup and there is not a hint of Hodgson wanting to deploy his captain in such a role.
A sequence that began with a friendly against Norway saw Rooney join Daniel Sturridge in attack, with Danny Welbeck taking over as Rooney’s partner for the five games that then followed.
Next came his deployment at the centre of a front three, then as a No 10 behind Kane and Theo Walcott before being returned to the pinnacle of England’s forward line for four more contests.
A three-match injury absence enabled Kane to establish himself and by the time Rooney made his international comeback, against France last November, he had found himself to the right of the young Tottenham striker.
That was Rooney’s last England appearance prior to coming on as a second-half substitute against Australia in the second of those three Euro 2016 warm-up games. He was deployed as a No 10 again that night and pushed further forward still for the Portugal game.
So how did Hodgson arrive at this? And how, too, did he decide on a front three of Adam Lallana, Kane and Raheem Sterling when their only outing together in such a formation was a friendly against Spain that FA officials remember only for the extent to which the national side was outplayed.
That night in Alicante, the front three managed just 18 passes to one another.
Here at the Stade Velodrome last night, Hodgson admitted the team he intends to announce to his players this morning was late in its development, even if he did then try to make out it had been ‘emerging over the last six months’.
‘I feel happy with it,’ he said. ‘The thing about football is you never arrive. At this level of football, we’re talking about you never arrive; you are always to some extent attempting to be better and improve on certain areas of your play.
‘But we are not alone. There won’t be many coaches who can say honestly — if they have any honesty — in front of guys like yourselves that: “We’ve got it all covered; we don’t have anything more to work on or think about”.’
Rooney, for his part, seemed pretty positive about what his manager appears to have in mind, responding to one question regarding his possible appearance in midfield by saying his favourite position was simply ‘on the pitch’.
He also said he had evolved as a player, in his opinion, ‘for the better’. He spoke of his ‘football intelligence’ and his belief that a switch of that nature might ‘further’ his ‘career’.
If truth be told, Rooney was already thinking in those terms, the arrival of Anthony Martial and the sudden development of Marcus Rashford persuading him that a switch to a deeper position might also be necessary at Manchester United.
He has played there before, of course, not least under Louis van Gaal. But he was already contemplating the transition on a permanent basis. And he’s right. It might further his career and prove every bit as successful for him, in his 30s, as it did for players like Lothar Matthaus, John Barnes and Ryan Giggs. Even the man he superseded as England’s leading goalscorer, Sir Bobby Charlton.
England’s players might have taken a stroll around the pitch against a backdrop of French police sirens as another night in this Mediterranean port threatened to erupt into violence, but maybe the deployment of Rooney is not a further cause for alarm.
If one player possesses the talent to make it work, it is Rooney.
There is also some method in the apparent madness. Russia have been weakened by the absence of key midfielders and that is something England can only exploit with skill and finesse on the ball.
Had Jack Wilshere been fit, he might have been Hodgson’s preferred option but Rooney is a decent alternative for this game.
England comprise a defence that needs to deal with the threat posed by the towering Artyom Dzyuba, and a terrific talent in Dele Alli who needs to have more of an influence. Not to mention a cool head.
If Hodgson was good humoured last night, it was actually Rooney who sounded more confident at the start of his sixth tournament.
Asked for three words to describe the young side he will lead out this evening, he said: ‘Disciplined, focused and exciting.’
And prepared? That we will discover tonight.