Cool Rooney

Much has been made about Wayne Rooney and his temperament... that he is a hot-headed lad who cannot keeps his cool. However, based on his recent performances on the field, I believe this young man has managed to control his temperament alot while maintaining the passion for the game he obviously loves so much. Nothing seems to distract him from playing his heart out match after match.

Of course, he still lets his feelings known to a referee when he felt that he was unfairly fouled on but don't all players do that??? Even, the most even tempered players like Ryan Giggs do come up to the referee and give him a piece of his mind if he felt he was hard done by the ref's decision.

Take yesterday's match with Arsenal as an example, there were many times I felt he had good reason to berate the referee but he did not... even when Kolo Toure deliberately handled the ball to deny him the goal with the referee just yards away from the whole incident. All he did was cried out for a handball but did not pursue the matter repeatedly... if it was him 1 year ago, he would have went on and on with the referee.

This time, he decided to let his feet do the talking... making sublime passes after sublime passes... splitting Arsenal's defence time and time again with either his through passes to Van Nistelrooy or Saha, or using his solo runs that seem to ignore the defenders there. Instead of letting his frustrations rule him, he channelled it into the passion that allowed him getting Man Utd into goal-scoring situations over and over again. When he did score, it was a brilliant one-touch-and-shoot shot. Sooo... sweet! :)

Another testament of his much-controlled temperament was during the build up to Man Utd's second goal where he resisted going down when challenged by Senderos in the six-yard box but decided to stay up, look up and put a cut-back that allowed Park Ji Sung to sweep it into the net. If he had wanted to, he could have gone down and would probably have gotten the penalty... Senderos missed the ball completely... but he did not, stayed calm and because of that, gave Man Utd a 2 goal lead.

All this happened while he had the press making allegations that he had accumulated huge gambling debts hanging over him. Again, he showed that he could withstand the pressures of the game and came up trumps and oh, there is another fact that all of us should not forget, the field he was on had the likes of Fabregas and Henry to competing against him. Guess who won the Man of the Match bottle??? :)

If he maintains such form and temperament, and the other members of the England team is galvanised by the very passion that everyone is asking him to curb, the World Cup is theirs for the taking.