Wayne Rooney has admitted he faces a huge challenge to convince Roy Hodgson he still deserves to be England’s main striker after being left out of the friendly against Spain so the team’s management can experiment with a new frontline that will feature Ross Barkley just behind Harry Kane.
Rooney will be restored to the team for Tuesday’s game against France at Wembley but Hodgson’s decision to experiment in Alicante is a clear indication England’s management is giving serious consideration to other options at a time when the Manchester United striker says the competition is fiercer than at any time in his 12-year international career.
Hodgson had planned to start Jamie Vardy at the Estadio José Rico Pérez but the Leicester City striker is still being troubled by an injury he suffered against Watford last weekend and must now pin his hopes on being back for the France match.
Rooney has scored 10 times in his 12 England appearances since the World Cup, establishing himself as the team’s record scorer with 50 goals in 107 caps, but his diminished form for Manchester United counts against him and he accepted he could no longer be thought of as a mandatory starter.
“If the manager needs to have a look to see what he can do at international level, you have to understand that,” he said. “It’s a huge challenge to keep your place in the team and that’s what I want to do. I want to prove myself. I feel that since Roy has been in charge, my international form has been great, I have scored a lot of goals and I hope that will continue.
“As a footballer you want to play. But then I have to understand I have played a lot of games for England and players like Jamie Vardy have come in and done well. It’s certainly the best group of strikers since I’ve been involved in the squad. We’ve also got players such as Danny Welbeck, Daniel Sturridge and Theo Walcott out injured so it’s a huge array of talent and great for the country. In previous years we’ve gone into tournaments and haven’t had that many match-winners in the squad. Now we’ve got quite a few match-winners, which can only benefit us as a team.”
The drawback is that three of those players are unavailable to Hodgson, among the 15 regular members of the squad who are injured. It has become a recurring problem for Hodgson and the manager suspects that changes to the pitches in the Premier League may be partly to blame.
“It’s a tough one. I honestly believe the pitches, strangely enough in getting so much better, have provoked more injuries. I have heard that put forward so maybe it’s the fact that the pitches, being so good, are forcing people to slide and stretch a bit more; that’s a possibility. All I can say definitely is there are plenty of sports science and medical people looking into it. Let’s hope they can find the solution because it is frustrating. It would have been nice to have had a harder selection problem than I ended up having, bringing in some people who might not have got a look-in otherwise.”
Hodgson does not plan to warn his players about Diego Costa’s habit of winding up opponents if the Chelsea striker starts for Spain. “We tend to concentrate on what we need to do. We give the players information about opponents and their strengths but we don’t go into that sort of detail where we say: ‘Be careful here’‚ because that would be teaching my grandmother how to suck eggs.
“I’d also be vilifying a player I have no need to vilify. He is a very combative player but we have combative centre-halves and they will just have to deal with that situation. I wouldn’t dream of suggesting he’s going to try underhand methods. Let’s hope he doesn’t and if he does we’re just going to have to deal with it and hope the referee deals with it, like they do every week in the Premier League.”
Vicente del Bosque, the Spain manager, has said Costa should “smooth out his character” but Rooney said he was an admirer of the striker’s aggressive style. “I actually voted for Costa as player of the year last season because I thought he was a huge player for Chelsea. I strongly believe that’s why they became champions. Obviously it hasn’t gone as well for him as it did last season but I think he is a fantastic player. He’s a fighter. That’s part of his game and it’s going to be very difficult for anyone to ask him not to do that. I feel that’s in him – that fight. He thrives on that and that gets his team-mates going as well.”
