He is England’s all-time top goalscorer. If he scores four more goals, he’ll be Manchester United’s all-time top goalscorer. He is the captain of his club and the captain of his country, yet if he plays a football game, it sets fans into a rage. And if he doesn’t play a football game, it sets pundits into a rage.
Wayne Rooney is perhaps the most divisive figure in English football at the moment, but perhaps unity is to be found by stating simply that he is not as good as he used to be.
It feels like politics is seeping into every corner of football these days. It matters to everybody who plays and why, and it seems to matter more and more what outsiders think – much more than the manager who is actually making the decisions.
Why, for example, should Roy Hodgson have picked Danny Drinkwater for his Euro 2016 squad when the England management staff had spent two whole years working with different players? It isn’t as simple as transplanting a new player into the squad based on form. There’s a trust and a loyalty issue present in such a decision (in a team sport, after all, values like trust matter a great deal). And that transplant is also an admission that the last two years of tireless work have been for absolutely nothing. Imagine paying a top quality manager millions of pounds per year simply to rip up his entire project on the eve of a major tournament. That tournament is the entire point of having an international manager in the first place.
That might raise the question of whether it is prudent to pay a top manager millions of pounds to manage the England national team, but under the current framework, asking him to pick his team based on his last six games at club level is madness.
Club management is different to what Hodgson experienced with England, but there are still similar issues at stake. The split between what pundits – ex-professionals – make of the Rooney situation and what fans and journalists make of it is fairly striking. Most of the ex-pros tend to be in Rooney’s corner, they might be split over the question of where he should play (in the midfield or the attack) – but, either way, they think he should have a place in the team. Most fans, on the other hand, want him dropped altogether.
That’s the ballet that the manager has to dance. These days, fan opinion and influence has never been stronger – to the clubs, fans are consumers, and clubs have to keep them happier than they ever did before – yet player power is also at its most influential.
The added dimension here is the obvious fact that Rooney is not the best player in any position, neither at club level nor at international level. Any Manchester United or England ‘best XI’ excludes Rooney, whether that’s based on form or on a tactical setup tailored to beat specific opposition.
If players value loyalty and togetherness, then the manager should value instilling it. That trust is not broken if Rooney – the captain – is dropped, but it is broken if he is dropped because of outside forces. Dropping a player who is out of form is just part of sport, but dropping him because nurses, factory workers, journalists and professions of every stripe that make up football fandom demand it, well that most certainly isn’t part and parcel of sport.
If perceptions matter, then Manchester United’s best team will start on Monday night against Liverpool. Whatever ‘best team’ means. Is it simply made up of the best footballers? Is it the best collective? Is it a team geared towards getting the best out of the world’s most expensive player, perhaps at the expense of other players?
But if perceptions matter to the fans, then Jose Mourinho may have to forego picking a side that he feels is more tactically suited to playing a very good Liverpool team in favour of picking one the fans want to see. And if perceptions matter to the players, then Wayne Rooney can only be dropped whenever it does not look like forces have conspired to put pressure on the manager. A manager who should be protecting the players, not worrying what the media and the fans think of him.
Football is a game of opinions: you’re entitled to yours. But when it comes to picking the team, only the manager’s counts. Criticise it, publicise your own opinion, or the opinions you’ve heard that you think are the best. But make sure that it’s constructive: otherwise all we get is a wall of noise.