Former England manager Fabio Capello has slammed ex-Everton star Wayne Rooney for his second spell at the club last season.
Rooney returned to his hometown team before the start of the last campaign following a hugely successful spell at Manchester United, but he moved on again last summer to MLS side DC United.
Capello, it’s safe to say, was unimpressed with the veteran’s second Toffees spell: “He decided to go to America, it is new football, different football,” he told Sky Sports. “It is a new experience and a lot of Italian players go there to finish off their careers.
“Rooney is a good player, but I saw the season when he returned to Everton and he didn’t perform well. He was on the pitch but like another part of the team. It was not the Rooney I remember – fighting, running – nothing. He lost everything, all his characteristics.”
OPINION
This seems a little harsh from Capello. Rooney’s season fizzled out last term but in the first half of the campaign he performed very impressively, scoring a number of important goals for the team. Obviously Ronald Koeman lost his job and Sam Allardyce came in and things went downhill from there, but for half of the season Rooney was one of Everton’s best players. To say that he lost everything is a pretty harsh statement, and not one that bears out when you consider the campaign as a whole. He wasn’t the Rooney of his Manchester United days but that doesn’t mean he was a shell of himself or anything like that. However, the time was right for him to move to the MLS and it seems like it’s going well for him so far – on the pitch at least. Still, it’s surprising to see one of his former managers criticise him in this way.