Wayne Rooney shouldn’t be defined by this USMNT game

The uproar over Wayne Rooney’s return to the England national team has been wildly overblown.

International breaks are second only to transfer windows in their tendency to produce silly news stories. And the uproar over what’s officially being referred to as “The Wayne Rooney Foundation international” has been no exception.

Rooney retired from international duty as his country’s record goalscorer and second-highest cap-winner in August 2017, nine months after his last appearance in an England jersey. At the time, he was six appearances behind legendary goalkeeper Peter Shilton, who hasn’t been particularly impressed by recent developments.

“I don’t think you can give caps out like gifts,” was Shilton’s less-than-ringing endorsement of the DC United forward’s return to England duty, and Shilton is far from the only ex-England great to have expressed such sentiments.

“It cheapens an international cap and I don’t think it’s right,” said Stuart Pearce, who coached the England team for one game and captained them on nine occasions.

Another former England captain, Paul Ince, claimed the decision “makes a mockery of the game” and amounts to “total nonsense.”

The British media haven’t greeted Rooney’s comeback with universal approval, either, as The Guardian’s venerable Richard Williams made clear in none too subtle terms.

Regardless of this chorus of disapproval, the 33-year-old will be brought on sometime in the second half against the USMNT on Thursday, at which point he’ll also be handed the captain’s armband.

And while Rooney’s introduction seems certain to be the game’s major talking point, one thing he doesn’t deserve is for his international career to be forever associated with friendlies.

Any direct comparison between Rooney and England’s other top 10 cap-winners is an inexact science, of course, due to the different eras that many of them played in.

The European Championships didn’t begin until 1960, for example, and Billy Wright earned his last international cap a year earlier. Similarly, the Home Championship ended in 1984, a year before Rooney was even born.

Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton, meanwhile, both retired from international duty at a time when the Euros were contested by just four sides and only 16 teams played in the World Cup finals.

For the record, the Home Championship was a blood-and-thunder annual British mini-league in which England faced the other constituent nations of the U.K., namely Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The games were often feisty, with a good few of them becoming legendary.

And as the demise of the Home Championship coincided with the expansion of both the World Cup and the Euros, a comparison that categorizes games played in all three tournaments as “major internationals” can be useful, in broad terms at least.

The “Others” category in the charts below includes such unremembered contests as the City Tournament, Copa das Nacoes and King Hassan II Cup, whatever they may have been.

By this measure, Rooney certainly hasn’t won a disproportionate amount of his international caps in friendlies, either in relative or absolute terms.

Half of England’s top 10 cap-winners have played more international friendlies than him, while in percentage terms only Bryan Robson and Ashley Cole have made a smaller proportion of their England appearances in friendlies.

Whatever your opinion of Rooney’s return to the England set-up, though, we should at least all be able to agree that he was astonishingly good at his first major international finals, Euro 2004. And you can enjoy the highlights of some of those performances here.