Perhaps he’ll prove everyone wrong before the end of the World Cup, but at the moment, the prodigy is beginning to look like just another player. Rob Smyth ponders a career that seems t0 have lost its way.

 If you said, while he marauding thrillingly through Euro 2004, that Rooney would never score a goal at a World Cup you would have been laughed or punched out of the pub. Yet that is now a significant possibilty. In those days Rooney was a peer of Cristiano Ronaldo. In fact he comfortably outperformed Ronaldo at Manchester United in the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons. But Ronaldo overtook Rooney thereafter and now they live in different worlds.