Cricket’s ongoing red-hot Ashes opera has had the soccer season deferentially tiptoeing into its autumn overtures, but a backlash will be rude and raucous all right, should the England soccer team play as gormlessly in their two forthcoming World Cup qualifiers as they did in the practice match last week, when Denmark disdainfully won by 4–1. Similar slovenly ineptitude against Wales a week today, or four days later against Northern Ireland, and the scorn and ridicule heaped by the London media on soccer’s zillionaires will overwhelm any new tricks even the cricketers can conjure up for its grand finale under the Oval’s gasometers.
Easily England’s best player in the Denmark debacle was the gifted, quarrelsome man-child Rooney at centre-forward. The talented barrel of belligerence might be the nominal No. 9, but Rooney is by no means your actual barnstorming England centre-forward of legend.
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