English pundits, most of whom are ex-players, seem to agree that Wayne Rooney's short fuse is essential: you take away Rooney's hot head, you weaken the player. It's one of the new cliches in football.
I don't know. Who can? I suppose Rooney's competitiveness, which often mutates into naked rage, is part of what has elevated him to the echelons of 'world class'. Pele, Maradona, Zidane... they all lost it now and again.
Rooney loses it less often than he did in the early phase of his career. He has more self-control, but not full self-control. His team-mates have noticed it.
"Everyone has seen his maturity as a player and a person over the years," Frank Lampard said recently. "I don't think there is any issue about trying to wind him up."
Argentina wound up David Beckham at the 1998 World Cup. Beckham lost his head and saw red.
Soccer News TopicsPortugal wound up Rooney at the 2006 World Cup. Rooney stamped on Ricardo Carvalho's balls and saw red.
A grab of the nuts here, a stamp on the fingers there. It works. A patronising tousle of the hair here, a knee in the back there. It works.
Bob Bradley would be negligent if he didn't tell his players to niggle Rooney early in next Saturday's Group C opener, as bigmouth Alexi Lalas suggested not so long ago. Not that the USA's players aren't fully aware already of Rooney's fragile temper.
Jay DeMerit said: "The team [USA] know that you try to wind Rooney up. But I think he's learned over the years, with people telling him that's an easy way to get at him. I don't think it's as easy to wind Rooney up as people think it is. The preparations for him in particular, of course, are going to be high. We just have to make sure we make his day as difficult as possible."
Bob Bradley doesn't strike me as an overly cynical man (unlike Lalas), and I assume his version of difficult is to ask his defenders to play hard and fair against Rooney, without any South American-style theatrics and tantrums.
But I wonder at what price victory... How many USA fans would happily watch Rooney prodded and provoked, against the spirit of the game, if it resulted in a defeat of England? The opportunity is there.
