When you’ve had the kind of career that Wayne Rooney has you’re able to recall upon some incredible former team-mates.
Rooney hung up his international boots last week after snubbing the chance to rejoin the England setup again.
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And, in a revealing series of interviews with talkSPORT, the former England and Manchester United captain has revealed who he thought was the best player he’s ever played alongside.
Paul Scholes is widely regarded as the greatest midfielder of his generation, with the likes of Xavi and Zinedine Zidane waxing lyrical about the ex-United man in the past.
And it appears Rooney is a member of the Scholes fan club too – whilst also claiming his misuse at international level cost England dearly.
Rooney said: “Scholesy is the best I’ve played with.
“He was the one player who had that game-management, and the mind which would have allowed him to go and play anywhere.
“He could put his boots on now and still play, I’m sure. He was that good.
“If we’d used him a bit more in his right position he could have certainly influenced a lot more games.”
Scholes was played out of his favoured position at Euro 2004 to accommodate the likes of Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard in the middle, and Rooney feels the so-called ‘Golden Generation’ were unlucky not to go further in major tournaments.
“If you look at that team, we were certainly capable of winning a trophy and it didn’t happen,” he added.
“We were unlucky in Portugal [2004] and Germany [2006], going out on penalties in the quarter-finals.
“If one of those goes the other way, you never what can happen. And if we’d used Paul Scholes better that would have given us a good start.”
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