England vs Spain: Manchester United captain Wayne Rooney released from squad with knee injury

1/11
Rory Dollard14 November 2016

Wayne Rooney has been released from the England squad after sitting out training on Monday with a knee injury.

Interim manager Gareth Southgate had already said the Manchester United forward would sit out Tuesday's friendly with Spain whether he was injured or not.

The 31-year-old was dropped by Southgate for last month's World Cup qualifying draw with Slovenia but captained the side for the 3-0 win over Scotland on Friday evening.

An FA statement read: "The striker sat out this morning's session at Tottenham Hotspur's training ground as a precaution due to a minor knee injury.

"However, with Gareth Southgate already set to rest his captain for the visit of Spain to Wembley Stadium tomorrow night, Rooney has been allowed to return to his club for further assessment."

Rooney was one of two players to miss training on Monday, along with left-back Ryan Bertrand.

England vs Scotland: In Pictures

1/29

Southgate's decision to start without the national captain and record goalscorer would hardly have been unprecedented in a friendly match but his insistence that he is taking decisions he deems to be in England's long-term interests, rather than his own prospects of being named permanent manager, cannot be coincidental.

Whether he no longer sees Rooney as an essential first-team pick, or simply wants the team to get used to playing without a man who has already telegraphed his retirement in 2018, is unclear.

Jordan Henderson will inherit the armband, as he did in Ljubljana, for the season-ending glamour tie.

Southgate said earlier on Monday: "I wouldn't start Wayne in this game anyway, so we'll decide which route to go.

"At times too much of that responsibility has laid with Wayne and we need to share that. There are leaders already and other potential leaders who I think can step forward.

"And once you have a team full of those players then we'll have a lot of success."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in