GAMESMANSHIP, it seems, is not solely the preserve of the foreigner.
At the end of a week in which Uefa handed down a two-match ban to Eduardo for diving his way to a Champions League penalty, Wayne Rooney stood accused of manufacturing the spot-kick that gave England the lead against Slovenia.
The incident was messier than Eduardo’s now infamous tumble over Celtic goalkeeper Artur Boruc. A half-hour into this Wembley friendly, Rooney sprinted with Bostjan Cesar to win a ball running into the penalty area.
While Cesar clearly laid a hand on Rooney’s shoulder, the England striker responded by grabbing a generous handful of the centre-back’s shorts.
Off-balance as he reached for the ball, Cesar also received a kick from Rooney that took him out of the game and Slovenia’s crucial World Cup qualifier against Poland in midweek. At best, the Swedish referee should have ignored the incident; instead he inexplicably awarded England a penalty that Frank Lampard converted with the minimum of fuss.
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Jermain Defoe extended England’s advantage early in the second half with his fifth goal in three internationals, while some worryingly slack defending from Glen Johnson, John Terry and Joleon Lescott led to a late Slovenian goal.
The visitors were not slow to voice their anger at Rooney’s methods in securing the spot-kick. West Bromwich Albion midfielder Robert Koren, asked the question of how the English would respond to one of their own involving themselves in such dark arts. “There has been a lot of criticism about diving this week. In my opinion Rooney went down too easily,” said Koren. “Let’s see if he gets criticised.”
Slovenia’s goalkeeper Samir Handanovic argued that a foul should have been given to the visitors and a caution to Rooney.
“They tangled for the ball and when he went down Rooney kicked Cesar,” said Handanovic. “It was never a penalty, it was a foul to us and Rooney should have been shown a yellow card.” Teammate Aleksander Radosavljevic continued the critique of the striker’s behaviour. “That’s the price you pay for being a small nation,” he said. “We all saw Rooney tangling with Cesar. We have to live with it, but what is worse than the penalty is that Cesar is out for Wednesday’s game.” The incident certainly underlined the stupidity of John Terry’s optimistic pre-match statement that “diving is something the England lads don’t do”.
Rooney, who again reinforced his status as England’s key attacker with a powerful performance, did not want to speak after the match so his take on the controversial incident remains unclear.
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Of more importance to Fabio Capello’s side is their own midweek qualifier against Croatia. Three points will guarantee England’s place at the 2010 World Cup finals, while offering a sense of vengeance for the Wembley loss to the Croats that excluded the national team from Euro 2008 and ended Steve McClaren’s ill-starred tenure as manager of his country.
“We’ve got a lot of respect for Croatia, especially after the way they performed last time,” said Steven Gerrard. “But the England players are still hurting from that result and that performance and we need to use that to motivate us to try to get the win on Wednesday.
“Slovakia were similar to Croatia, so we got a fair idea of how they are going to play. The positives are the win and another goal for Jermain, who’s absolutely on fire. And in a strange way the positive is that Rooney missed a couple of chances — hopefully he’s saving them for Wednesday.” Goals generally sit easier on the conscience than penalties.