After all the buildup, with the tributes already prepared and Sir Bobby Charlton on standby to make a special presentation at Wembley next week, it would be quite some anticlimax if Wayne Rooney leaves us all hanging on and the inevitable goal-fest against San Marino finishes without his coronation as England’s record scorer.
Equally, it does not feel like a wild leap of imagination to suspect Rooney will have at least equalled, and conceivably bettered, the 49-goal mark by the time England have finished with the team who have one win from 130 games and three clean sheets in 25 years.
England won here 8-0 on their last visit in March 2013, though Rooney helped himself to only one on that occasion. He scored three in his other two games against San Marino, both 5-0 wins, and though it was understandable that the player in question did not want to sound overly presumptuous it would undoubtedly feel slightly embarrassing for Rooney if it turns out Charlton’s services are not needed for the presentation that has been planned before Tuesday’s game against Switzerland.
England will be based before that game at the sumptuous Grove Hotel in Hertfordshire, set amid the golf course where Tiger Woods once birdied the monster 9th hole three times out of four to win the World Golf Championship. San Marino’s players, in stark contrast, could be found at a three-star hotel filled otherwise with England fans carrying bottles of beer from the supermarket across the main road. Hotel Rossi is described in the brochures as “simply furnished” and the kind of place where, one imagines, the Football Association quickly skipped over when it came to deciding where the England players stayed.
Yet San Marino are not the usual kind of opponent and it is a very different world to the luxuries of the Premier League. All but two of England’s opponents are amateur footballers and none is a full-time professional. Some are out of work because, as the coach Pierangelo Manzaroli explained: “It is not an easy time.”
One of the San Marino players is a painter by trade. There are a couple of bank clerks, a chemist, various students and two brothers whose normal job is to run Bar Funivia, known locally for its annual ping-pong tournament and where the recent entertainment has included a band called The Cheesecake Quartet. San Marino’s football history since 1990 features 17 goals of their own – and 530 for the opposition
They are, in short, the kind of team a striker wants to play against when he is chasing a record. Or, indeed, one in Jamie Vardy’s position who will be starting an England game for the first time. Vardy’s selection represents a surprise and a reflection, undoubtedly, on Harry Kane’s difficult start to the new Premier League season. Rooney’s starting position will be, in theory, just behind the Leicester striker but these fixtures tend to be so one-sided the initial system morphs into 4-2-4 almost from kick-off.
For Rooney, the only downside is that there will inevitably be people who think the achievement is diminished if the record arrives in the 6,664-capacity Stadio Olimpico, one of the small number of international football grounds where there are only two stands and trees behind both goals. That is a small consideration and England’s captain will clearly be glad when it is no longer such a talking point. “It keeps being brought up,” he said. “It would be nice, finally, to do it and then I can put it to the back of my mind.”
Beyond that, a victory would confirm England’s qualification in Euro 2016, with three games to spare, and can probably be considered a formality given that San Marino’s goal-less draw with Estonia in November was the first time in 60 attempts they have managed not to lose a Uefa qualifying match. That result saw them shoot up from joint bottom with Bhutan, 207th, in Fifa’s world rankings to 192nd but they have a strange place in the football world and there was an awkward moment in Manzaroli’s press conference when he announced Roy Hodgson should show them more respect.
Hodgson had done nothing more than say he might have one or two places up for grabs in an interview at The Oval on 19 August while he was watching England’s cricketers messing around with a game of football. Perhaps Manzaroli will show his players the interview as a way of motivating them. Either way, it is not likely to have any real influence on what to expect: one team’s attack against one’s defence and a chance for Rooney to catch or overhaul a record that has stood for 45 years.
In total, 39 of his goals for England have come from inside the box (including four penalties). There have been nine outside, two of which were free-kicks. Eleven have been headers, 32 with his right boot and five from the left. Rooney turned his mind back to goal No1, set up by Emile Heskey, in Skopje’s Gradski stadion on 6 September 2003 and there is a neat symmetry about the way he will be going for the record almost exactly 12 years to the day. That is still Rooney’s favourite England goal, albeit not the best. “The goalkeeper should have saved it,” he said.
