Wayne Rooney joins the list of great English footballers who only had good England careers

Wayne Rooney is a great English footballer who had only a good England career.

Well, he’s not alone in that. The same goes for Jimmy Greaves and Gary Lineker. You could argue the same, too, about so many more of the biggest names of our game – all apart from the 11 men who won the World Cup in 1966, in fact.

That’s how it is for this particular international team. The big men of recent times like Rooney, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and David Beckham paradoxically proved their real worth and filled their boots with all the club honours in the game at the same time. But they all faced endless frustration in their country’s shirt.

It doesn’t diminish the idea that Rooney has been one of the best, most talented, most visionary and most expansive English footballers in history.

A man who even last Monday night showed yet again the depth of his abilities as a footballer who is both instinctive yet intelligent, too, when he scored a goal of sublime cleverness for Everton at Manchester City, his 200th in the Premier League.

But it will leave us all wishing - for ever now - that there had been so much more from him to embellish his stellar achievements with Manchester United. And wishing that the great surge of optimism and belief he created as an 18-year-old in the sunny, early days of Euro 2004 in Portugal had led to so much more instead of crashing and dissipating so quickly.

There has been a lot of hope and a lot of fine moments but not a lot of anything as tangible as success throughout the history of the England team

Rooney’s announcement on Wednesday that he is to retire from the global stage hands us yet another reminder of that unchanging fact of life about following our national side.

He’s not alone in that, either. But this particular failure in international football is more frustrating because he was simply so good.

As we all understand so graphically, things have been getting steadily worse, not better at major tournaments.

Wayne Rooney's England goals

Unhappily, Rooney’s time with England, as uplifting, impressive and unselfish as much of it has been with its 53 goals in 119 appearances, describes perfectly that arc of decline from the fresh, buoyant hope of his debut in 2003 until the desperate humiliation of defeat by Iceland at Euro 2016 in France last year.

Even then, in Nice, he scored after only four minutes to create another fervent but false dawn.

They said he was the new Gazza because they were both such immense, rampant “street footballers.” So it turned out in terms of frustration and disappointment for a nation who put such yearning faith in both players, even though Paul Gascoigne did make his impact on the big tournaments and memorably helped drive England to the 1990 World Cup semi-final and the last four at Euro 96.

Rooney never got that far. And it rarely looked like he ever would.

A total of seven goals at major tournaments is hugely under-whelming. It’s a fact that vast majority of his strikes for England were in simple qualifiers or friendlies.

Lineker scored just one fewer many tournament goals in one World Cup finals in Mexico in 1986. Greaves, who scored 44 times in 57 England games, played in the early stages of the 1966 World Cup, so that’s a more tangible international achievement, too. They were more impactful “good” England players than Rooney. So many English greats have under-achieved, though.

One goal at the World Cup finals – a late tap-in against Uruguay when the die was already cast for England’s embarrassingly rapid exit in 2014 – is very little to show on the biggest stage of all for a player with such extravagant and compelling abilities.

Thirteen years a later, it is still the briefly shimmering high-points of Euro 2004 which remain his most striking moments for England. We lost against France but then Rooney took off like a young bull through the hot afternoons and scored twice against Switzerland and twice more against Croatia. A fabulous partnership with Michael Owen emerged. The team was clearly good enough to win the competition. Then it was all over in an instant, with Rooney injured and Sven Goran Eriksson’s team out on penalties in the last eight.

They didn’t even qualify for the next set of Euros in 2008 and there’s another metaphor for so many major England careers like Rooney’s.

He wouldn’t complain at being judged as someone who should have achieved more on the international stage. All the disappointed and unfulfilled men of the so-called Golden Generation are in agreement. They’re not daft.

But the disappointments of his first two World Cups were notable for over-wrought fuss and drama rather than anything resembling even a near-miss on the pitch. And these were more metaphors for the way controversy and distraction undermined England’s hopes so often.

He was injured before Germany 2006 and eventually arrived unfit – to be sent off against Portugal in another last eight exit.

In South Africa in 2010, he infamously derided the England supporters as they jeered off the team after an appalling draw against Algeria.

It was his own frustration boiling over, even if it didn’t chime at the time with those incensed fans.

Looking back now, there is a more benign view of his outburst to the TV cameras as he left the pitch because nobody now can ever doubt his dedication to the England cause and his desperation to do well.

He curbed his petulance, too, after twice being sent off in his nation’s shirt in 2006 and 2011 and became an impressive England captain. In truth, it was only a symptom of his rage to succeed.

But it’s a rage which amounted only to a long footage reel of goals, spectacular and otherwise, which in the grandest schemes of football, didn’t count for very much.

What a shame. How frustrating. How typical.