Rooney admits to overruling ex-England boss
Wayne Rooney has admitted he overruled former England manager Roy Hodgson by replacing Harry Kane on corner duty during Euro 2016.
Hodgson was criticised for a number of his tactical and selection decisions as his side failed in France, with one of the earliest debates centring around his main striker delivering dead balls rather than getting on the end of them.
Kane took all six corners in the opener against Russia, only for Rooney to take over early in the second group match against Wales.
New manager Sam Allardyce has retained Rooney as skipper and has backed him to make decisions during matches – something he was certainly happy to do in Lens.
“Roy obviously decided for Harry to take corners. I felt at the time that he was the top goalscorer in the Premier League and he’s a big lad in the box,” said the Manchester United star.
“It was Roy’s decision, but after the first game I don’t think Harry wanted to take the corners so I went and took them.
“I felt I probably should have taken them anyway. He’s probably better in the air than me and for the last season he had been scoring a lot of goals. So that was it really. I think players have the right to make decisions on the pitch. You make a decision on what you see on the pitch. Nothing was ever made of it. I don’t think Roy had an issue with that.”
Allardyce has pointedly kept his thoughts on the Euros to a minimum, preferring to draw a line under the recent past rather than dwell on the latest traumatic tournament.
But Rooney, asked for his diagnosis of what went wrong in the knockout loss to Iceland, said: “There was a big lack of concentration in the game. You can say Iceland are ranked wherever they are in world football, but at that level if you lose concentration you will get punished and that is what happened.
“I felt we chased the game too soon which meant we lost our shape too easily. I felt if we’d stuck to what we were doing and worn them down the goal might have come.”
Meanwhile, Rooney intends to end his international career following the 2018 World Cup finals in Russia.
England’s all-time leading goalscorer is set to pick up his 116th cap in Sunday’s World Cup qualifier in Slovakia (5pm).
“Realistically, I know Russia will be my last opportunity to do anything with England, so I am going to try and enjoy these two years and then hopefully I can end my time with England on a high,” he said.
“I have had a fantastic international careerM but at some point it has got to come to an end. Come Russia, I feel that would be the right time for me to say goodbye to international football.
“My mind is made up – obviously that is down to Sam Allardyce in terms of over the next two years – but that will be my last tournament if selected.”