Following another match-winning display by the Liverpool and Uruguay striker, the Three Lions are in dire need of a leader which many of their international rivals can boast.
Brazil have Neymar. Argentina have Lionel Messi. Portugal have Cristiano Ronaldo. Sometimes superstars lead to a simplification of football. They encourage us to ignore their 10 team-mates and focus on the famous faces.
But sometimes they just win matches and justify their lofty billing. Because, as England know to their cost, Uruguay have Luis Suarez. The PFA Player of the Year and the Footballer of the Year had already established a status as the scourge of English defences. Now he can add the England defence to his list of victims. Even semi-fit, Suarez is deadly enough to be a match-winner. It finished Suarez 2 England 1.
His vocal band of backers among the Liverpool support believe he belongs alongside Messi and Ronaldo among the world’s top three. Others make a case for Neymar, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Franck Ribery, Arjen Robben, Andres Iniesta or England’s other nemesis, Andrea Pirlo.
There is a common denominator. None of those are English. It is a moot point quite how far down any unofficial rankings you have to scan to find one of Roy Hodgson’s players but it is an indication that the 23-man long-list for last year’s Ballon d’Or contained a solitary Brit: the proud Welshman Gareth Bale. He, as he showed in the Copa del Rey and Champions League finals, can decide defining games.
England’s record against the leading footballing nations in major tournaments is famously poor. Defeats to Italy and Uruguay has rendered it still worse. There are two obvious antidotes: either to have a team capable of prospering in such games, which is Germany’s answer, or to possess an individual who can make the difference.
For a decade, the expectation has been that Rooney would fill that void. Yet his status is subject to a wider debate: he has secured the most lucrative contract in the history of English football and now, having ended his World Cup drought, is the national team’s joint-fourth highest goalscorer. But Rooney does not belong in the planet’s top 20 players at the moment. Some would not put him in the top 50.
He has been the king of qualifiers, the man for the medium-sized occasion. When it has mattered more, at the 2006 and 2010 World Cups and Euro 2012, Steven Gerrard has delivered more without ever replicating his blistering brilliance Liverpool know all too well. The captain was match-loser, not match-winner against Uruguay. At 34, he may never play in a major tournament again.
source: goal.com
STUDIO 3 NEWCASTLE AUSTRALIA 