Wayne Rooney’s struggles for club and country need no introduction. The perhaps striker, sometimes no. 10 and definitely-not-but-let’s-give-it-a-try midfielder is trying to prolong his days as a soccer boy extraordinaire, but it’s just not coming off at 30 years of age.
His movement looks tired, his touch a bit lumpy and his strengths have been boiled down to a combination of strong concentration levels and nice little layoffs.
Everyone’s a football Einstein when it comes to the remedy, but even Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho claims that Rooney being dropped is "not my problem". Apparently Mourinho has skipped past the 'dreaded vote of confidence' phase and just begun treating Rooney like Mr. Chow treats the Wolfpack.
“He’s got to drop into midfield!” say many. “He’s got to drop to a lower level, like MLS or Arsenal!” say others. While some believe that he should just drop this whole footballing thing entirely.
For a man that’s scored more goals for England than Peter Crouch and Emile Heskey combined, that’s just ignorant. But we finally have a voice of reason in this discussion, Sunderland striker and fellow venerable fossil Jermain Defoe.
“I’d say get him in the cryo!” urged Sunderland striker Jermain Defoe to the Daily Mirror, which sounds a lot more like cryonics than cryotherapy.
The difference? Cryotherapy is the use of low temperatures in medical therapy. Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of people who cannot be sustained by contemporary medicine.
If we go with the latter, it’s evident that Defoe has recognized the age of 30 as Wayne Rooney’s ceiling — it’s time to freeze Wazza in the hopes of future resuscitation, eventually restoring him to full health after being awoken in a time when the contemporary medicine of the day can do what today’s medicine did for his hair.
The faster we can freeze Wayne Rooney for safekeeping and future defrosting, the longer we can delay the inevitable:
If anybody has any Kickstarter or GoFundMe experience, let's get the ball rolling.
(H/T: ESPN FC)
Follow me on Twitter: @ConmanFleming