Keeping Reins on Wayne

There can hardly be two Scousers of more contrasting temperaments than Michael Owen and the teenager who runs alongside him like an escaped tiger.

Where Owen transmits calm, Wayne Rooney is a snarling ball of aggression, too wild for some tastes, but a force impossible to ignore on or off the pitch. He is restless in every sense of the word, keen to light up every football ground or bar in which he plays. Sadly, Goodison Park and the Adelphi disco might not for much longer be the turf he calls home.

Along with Steven Gerrard, Owen and Rooney are a credit to Merseyside. But Rooney will almost certainly soon inquire about moving out of town, in search of money and Champions League football with any of the few clubs in Europe who will be able to afford him.

Because it is plain that, to make an impression at international level, footballers need the incentive of greater challenges with their clubs. In the England starting line-up against Switzerland on Thursday night, only David James and Rooney have no immediate prospects of playing in Europe with their clubs.

Just as Rooney is unlikely to get a taste of continental football in the foreseeable future with Everton, so Owen must wonder how long it will be before Liverpool stir from their longeur. You can be certain it won't just be the money that lures Gerrard down to London if, as seems likely, he signs for Chelsea.

It would be a shame, certainly for the club, if Rooney is tempted to go because it will only help in the apparently unstoppable process of turning the Premiership into a three-team race.

Yet what is he to do? He is 18 and has time on his side, but as we have seen in the intemperance of his play, patience is not one of his virtues. It could be his downfall, maybe tomorrow night against Croatia, because he is adamant the yellow card he was rightly handed for that studs-up lunge that nearly took Jorg Stiel's head off in Coimbra will not quell his commitment.

Alan Smith used to trot out the same sort of nonsense when he was collecting cards like a riverboat gambler. He has calmed down somewhat, but his early days were full of the sort of rage and spite that, unfortunately, makes Rooney as much a liability as an asset.

It will be a test of Sven-Göran Eriksson's diplomacy to rein him in. If he fails to do so, it is a safe bet Rooney will not see out a lot more of this tournament.

Eriksson, according to David Beckham, showed sense in listening to the players when he asked them if they were comfortable playing his daft diamond formation. He has to show similar wisdom - but a firmer hand - in dealing with his energetic tearaway.

It is a shame Rooney finds it difficult to control the physical side of his game because everything else in his armoury - the vision, pace, strength on the ball and selflessness off it, as well as a thirst for scoring that Owen seems to have temporarily lost - are the qualities that defined the football of another wonderkid, Duncan Edwards.

Edwards grew up in an era in which the concept of being a teenager was still a novel one. Those who knew him said he fitted the profile of respectful young player in a man's world. He moved quietly among established giants, even though his own talent outstripped that of nearly everyone he played with or against.

Like Rooney, Edwards seemed physically older than his years - yet he never deigned to assume the swagger of adulthood. He would have been swiftly told to mind his manners had he tried to.

Some might regard such an old-fashioned view as misguided nostalgia. Maybe it is. And perhaps it's unrealistic to imagine that an 18-year-old footballer with the earning potential of a small town will resist the lure of Chelsea, Arsenal or Real Madrid.

Idiotic, too, no doubt, that such a wonderful young footballer would ever stop and think for a moment about the consequences of his serial rashness. Madder still to think that a grown-up might have a quiet word in his shell-like and not be told to bugger off.

More than once Rooney has been compared to a young Paul Gascoigne. The similarities are glaringly obvious: the precocious talent, the eye-bulging commitment and the seeming lack of guidance from those in a position to stop a genius turning into a wreck.

Gascoigne's weakness was alcohol. And the stories of the wild days and nights of the Rooney clan no doubt amuse Liverpudlians not embarrassed to have their city lampooned as Dodge City. (Asked what time Euro 2004 kicked off, Gerrard is said to have replied: 'When Wayne Rooney's mum arrives.')

But even if they are not of Rooney's making, Rooney will need to show character not to be drawn towards excesses that are meat and drink for the tabloids. Whether he would be better off in Tramp than the Adelphi is hard to say, but, as there was with Gascoigne, there will be plenty of clever customers waiting for him wherever he goes.