Wayne Rooney has been England’s most important attacking player since Euro 2004. But injury prevented him from making a significant impact at World Cup 2006 (other than to Ricardo Carvalho’s groin). And prior to Fabio Capello’s arrival in 2008, Rooney had also experienced a barren spell at international level.
Capello’s arrival, however, has ensured that a team structure is in place to bring out the best in Rooney’s game. For several years England’s first choice forward-line was Rooney and Michael Owen. In this pairing, Owen would be considered the principal goal-threat with Rooney as the support striker linking midfield and attack. The problem with this approach is that the strike-force was built around the least imposing and influential member of the pairing. Capello understands that the centre-forward in international football has to be more than a goal-scorer. In fact, in contemporary football the orthodox centre-forward can be considered the support-striker: they hold the ball up and create opportunities and space for withdrawn forwards and midfielders. Under Capello, Rooney has therefore benefited from being paired with an imposing, hard-working target-man such as Emile Heskey or Peter Crouch.
Rooney does tend to spearhead the attack at Man Utd. This works within a familar and well-oiled club set-up but, at international level, deployment as a lone forward is likely to leave him isolated. Rooney would end up supporting the team structure, rather than having the structure supporting him. Football is a team game, but the team has to facilitate optimum performance from key attacking individuals. Up against highly organized international sides, it is crucial to have a talismanic player (or two) that can exploit narrow margins of space. For England, this player is Rooney.
Rooney therefore plays something of a withdrawn role for England. Although Capello would not wish for his best attacking player to become mired in midfield battles, this role does allow Rooney to occupy the space of the opposition’s defensive midfielders. Capello also utilizes Steven Gerrard as a nominal left-sided midfielder who will drift infield to influence the play. Rooney often counterbalances this ploy by pulling out to the left. On occasions (for example against Belarus in Minsk) Rooney has taken up more of a defined left-sided role with Gerrard in a more fixedly central position. This approach was adopted so that England could take control of midfield having been overrun in the first-half. Despite this approach, Rooney could still move into central areas and he scored two goals in the second-half.
With a strong target man and a centrally-leaning left-sided midfielder in the team, Rooney has capacity to drop deep and wide in search of space. Edging to the wing has been an effective ruse for forwards in the Premier League (e.g. Thierry Henry) as this prevents them from being bogged down in congested central areas. Goal-scoring forwards in contemporary football do not necessarily need to be perched permanently on the shoulder of a centre-back. What is crucial, however, is that the team structure is strong enough to draw the key forwards into all-important central attacking areas. The fact that Rooney scored freely over the qualifiers demonstrates that Capello’s approach has been working.¬† In addition, when Rooney has been unavailable for England, Capello has replaced him with an orthodox centre-forward such as Gabriel Agbonlahor, rather than seeking out an advanced central midfielder to play behind the target man. This suggests that, despite the freedom afforded to his best attacker, Capello clearly sees Rooney as a centre-forward – and the England formation when he plays as closer to 4-4-2 than 4-2-3-1.
Rooney is the principal player who could propel England beyond the comfort zone of the quarter-finals. He has been on the best club form of his life and Capello has built a team structure which provides him with the optimum support. It will be more than a centre-back’s groin that feels the full impact of Rooney at World Cup 2010!