In September Wesley Sneijder sat on a sofa in the centre circle of the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam, after making what he had decided would be his final international appearance, against Peru, and was joined by his wife and children to watch highlights of his career. Heart-warming as the moment was, the fact a 34-year-old who plays for Al-Gharafa, the sixth-best team in Qatar, was able to dictate the terms of his departure was perhaps another indication of a Netherlands team in long-term decline, and of a nation happier to look backwards than forwards. International football rarely has room for sentiment and England have certainly never allowed even their greatest players to tie up their careers with a ribbon and a bow.
When Sir Alf Ramsey picked his first squad after the disappointment of the 1970 World Cup, one name was notably absent. “I do not think this is the end of my international career,” Bobby Charlton said. “Players have been left out of the England squad before and come back.” This one never did. “I still get a kick out of finding myself in the team,” said Bobby Moore in June 1973. “You can never be certain of getting a game.” He won two more caps, the last that November. “I’m not ready to step aside,” David Beckham said in July 2010. “I still believe I have a part to play.” Fabio Capello, the England manager, disagreed. “Thank you,” he said the following month, “but probably he is a little bit old.”
Tom Finney’s farewell came in a 5-0 win over the Soviet Union in October 1958. “Finney, who did not receive much of the ball, had a pretty thin time,” was all the Guardian had to say of his performance. Stanley Matthews had gone a year earlier, after a 4-1 victory in Copenhagen. “It was a game of fits and starts, particularly by the forwards, and little was ever seen of Matthews,” we wrote. And, indeed, nothing was ever seen of him again.
With only one major prize in the nation’s trophy cabinet, England internationals have rarely been able to enjoy a glorious farewell. Gary Lineker was substituted an hour into a European Championship humiliation in Sweden; Peter Shilton blundered in a World Cup third-place play-off; Steven Gerrard was left on the bench as Costa Rica dumped England out of the tournament in 2014. “This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen, the exact way,” he sniffed as he came to terms with the result, and the end of his international career.
And yet suddenly England are giving Wayne Rooney an emotional farewell. It is a move that jars horribly both with the nation’s hard-hearted history and with the ethos of the senior side’s current manager.
In September Gareth Southgate announced “a fresh cycle of probably not going back to players who’ve been in before”. The claims of experienced strikers impressing in the Premier League, such as Watford’s Troy Deeney, were dismissed. “For me, the next forward players that should be challenging are some of the younger ones,” said Southgate. Now a door closed to as-yet uncapped players for whom the chance to play for their country even once would be the realisation of a dream and a reward for years of dedication, is opened to allow a 33-year-old with 119 caps to milk some artificial applause.
Capello had come up with an identical idea when discussing the end of Beckham’s career. “I hope David will be OK to come and play his last game here at Wembley in the next friendly game,” he said, “to come and wave bye-bye to the crowd.” It was an unplanned comment made in a television interview and the proposal was not greeted warmly at the Football Association, or by the player. Plans were made to include him in the squad to play France that November but Beckham would not, in any sense of the phrase, play ball, and sources told the press he would appear only if selected on merit.
When an identical proposal was put to Rooney, two years after his last international appearance, he was “humbled and hugely excited” to accept. It takes an unusual personality to refuse the offer of a high-profile ego massage and Rooney cannot fairly be blamed for succumbing, particularly with his charity, the Wayne Rooney Foundation, to benefit from the match. But this turn of events reflects poorly on the FA – which two weeks before a low-key friendly, and six weeks after tickets went on sale, may have put commercial motivations above sporting ones – and suggests either Southgate’s focus on youth has been insincere, or that the idea has been imposed on him.
It is a terrible shame England have allowed so many fine players to stumble away from the international scene unnoticed or in disgrace but in sport it is essential to earn adulation through toil and triumph. It should not be irredeemably naive to suggest that neither charity nor economic convenience should have any place in the process.
The Guardian Sport
