Rooney at Risk of Losing England Euro 16 Place

Posted on | March 31, 2016 | No Comments

The 2016 UEFA European Championship is slowly dominating sports news, with only three months until the opening ceremony. As the international event is synonymous with England and them never managing to get past the semi-final stage, all attention is currently on whether they can make this year theirs.

After the success of their friendly played against Germany on March 26th, the question of whether England have learnt anything from Germany’s victory in the 2014 World Cup would appear to have been put to bed. Having been two-nil down for the majority of the match, England’s impressive fight and passion to regain control, despite the mantra of ‘it’s only a friendly’, helped fans catch a glimpse of what Roy Hodgson’s England team is capable of. Which in turn spurred on comments from the likes of renowned Newcastle player Malcolm Macdonald, who believes that England can present themselves as a serious Euro 16 threat.

In his commentary on the England side, Macdonald stated that the club now has strikers that can instill worry into a lot of European teams taking part, something which England had lacked in prior UEFA Championships. He focused his attention on Leicester’s Jamie Vardy and Tottenham’s Harry Kane, however, it was Wayne Rooney who he pinpointed as being key to this pairing. Rooney could take on a kind of puppeteer role and pull all the strings, enabling a strong force to dominate the pitch, or at least that is what Macdonald believes. That being said, while a bet on Euro 2016 at Coral is a must for virtually all fans, pinning hopes on the Manchester United captain might not be wise as it appears that Roy Hodgson has yet to confirm where the former Everton stars places in the team.

There is no doubt that Rooney will be in the final 23 strong team, however, there is mounting pressure as to what role he will assume, and whether Kane could replace him in the starting line up. Due to a knee injury, Rooney was unable to play in the friendly against Germany and Holland, and despite the fact that the Holland match didn’t go in England’s favour, there is still a lot of hope surrounding the current team put forward. This is most apparent in some of the fantasy teams that commentators are putting together after the Holland loss on Tuesday March 29th; not once in the lineup is Rooney mentioned.

The argument for getting rid of Rooney in the first England team is something that is growing in popularity, and as such adds more intensity to the Wayne Rooney Euro 2016 question in general. Currently the player seems to be safe, but for how long is undoubtedly what many fans and backers are asking as they continue to cast their eyes to the fluctuating Euro 2016 odds.

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