England captain Wayne Rooney has backed stand-in skipper Jordan Henderson after being dropped by Gareth Southgate.
Rooney, dropped to the bench for England’s World Cup qualifier against Slovenia on Tuesday night, will hand over the captaincy to Liverpool midfielder Henderson.
‘I’m positive. Of course I want to play but I’m in a positive frame of mind and ready to come on if needed. Hopefully we can win the game and I don’t __have to come on to help us win it. I understand it’s a difficult decision for Gareth and respect it,’ Rooney said.
‘I think Jordan is a fantastic leader. He has taken a difficult job from Steven Gerrard at Liverpool and grown into the position. He has great leadership qualities and he deserves his chance. It will be an incredibly proud moment for him and his family.’
Southgate, who played the England captain in a deep-lying midfield role against Malta, believes criticism of Rooney has been ‘unfair’.
‘The criticism of him is at times unfair,’ Southgate said after the Malta win. ‘He ploughs on and plays with pride and captains his country with pride.
‘I look back to John Terry, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole. In their time with England they took an enormous amount of criticism and yet when you look at the number of caps they got they were the guys that kept turning out.
‘They were the ones that really put themselves on the line when some other players would not put themselves forward in those moments and withdrew from squads when the going got tough.’
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