Ronaldo and Rooney have a long history, not just from their partnership at Manchester United, but also from a series of explosive matches between England and Portugal.
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The 22 year-old’s honesty was rewarded when Italian official Marco Guida produced a straight red card for Alves and Kane has urged other referees at this summer’s tournament to similarly reward fair play.
“I’d play him”, Waddle, who was speaking at The Three Lions pub as part of Carlsberg’s “Pubstitutions” campaign, told Omnisport. “I want to play, I want to be in the starting XI, of course, every single player does, but it’s down to the manager”.
“I was looking for him to play behind the front two as an attacking midfield player or deep-lying centre-forward, or number 10, or whatever you like to call it”, the England manager said of Rooney.
Hodgson has defended his strategy of deploying strikers Jamie Vardy and Harry Kane in wide areas during the Portugal game.
“We’ll see what formation the manager picks against Russian Federation and we will do our best”.
We know we’ve got to be a bit cuter but if the refs are on their game like he was on Thursday, we’ll be fine.
Portugal came out with a focus on defence and head coach Fernando Santos was forced to magnify that strategy after Bruno Alves was sent off in the 35th minute for a unsafe high tackle on Kane in midfield.
It was an underwhelming display and the toothless attack was particularly concerning, with Hodgson unable to effectively shoehorn the triumvirate of Wayne Rooney, Kane and Vardy into the same line-up. I think he just caught me with the top of his boot rather than his studs so I got away with that one’.
‘I think he’s learned from that, ‘ he said.
“We didn’t have many chances, none of us, so it is something the manager is working on and Portugal made it hard”, Rooney said.
“We were asked to play together against Portugal and we won the game”.
The diamond shape Hodgson rolled out against Portugal did not seem a happy fit for the 11 selected and something – or someone – may have to give before the Russian Federation match on June 11.
“When you play that system you need your strikers to split”, he explained.
“We need to keep improving at it and we have to hope that players like Walker and Rose, who performed their roles in exactly the way we’d like them to, also happen to have very good games”. “I was disappointed tonight that it didn’t stay 11 v 11.
Some people might say we did, some people might say we didn’t”.
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“As everybody knows, Portugal is considered one of the high-risk teams due to the presence of Cristiano Ronaldo”.
