Well, at least one Rooney did well this summer. That’s Martyn of course, one of the second tier of Britain’s medal winners at the European Athletics Championships who played a blinder to pick up an individual bronze and a relay silver in the 400 metres. The meeting was a simply glorious celebration of multi-ethnic harmony in Barcelona that was more or less enough to lift the nameless sense of dread that assails the soul at the prospect of a new football season.
Interviewed in a pair of mock giant black-rimmed glasses, Rooney explained that the whole team wore them one day as a tribute to their Dutch coach Charles van Commenee, who, said Rooney, found it all a bit of a giggle. It’s hard to imagine another, better-known foreign coach, Fabio Capello, having much of a cackle were his expensively assembled charges to try out a similar jape by all wearing their manager’s Marxist lecturer-style glasses.
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