Heskey rejects England SOS
Villa striker can't be tempted for national service but Rooney returns for Euro 2012 qualifier
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Aston Villa's Emile Heskey has rejected a request to return to international football for England's next game, the European Championship tie at home to Montenegro on Tuesday week. With so many strikers injured, Heskey was approached by England's general manager Franco Baldini last week, but he decided to stick to his decision to concentrate on club football, which was taken after the World Cup this summer.
Although unsuccessful in South Africa, where he was taken off twice and used as a substitute twice without adding to his poor scoring record, he has come alive since being reunited with Gerard Houllier, Villa's new manager. Last week he scored with a powerful header to win the local derby against Wolves, watched by Capello, who said: "He played very well and he is in a good moment." Like Paul Scholes before him, however, Heskey decided against a return, leaving Capello to hope that Wayne Rooney will be fully fit, as well as Darren Bent and Peter Crouch.
That appeared more likely last night, although United did not consider that Rooney was ready to return at Sunderland. They will allow Capello and his medical team to make a final decision on whether he appears against Montenegro, which Rooney is keen to do. Yesterday he admitted that "it's been a hard time" since revelations about his private life put a strain on his marriage. "I'm only a human being, I hurt as well," he told Sky Sports News HD, "but I need to get through this and get back to playing football the way I know I can. I'm sure everything else will settle down after that."
Speaking for the first time in any depth about the World Cup, he was unable to offer any explanation for England's wretched form, or his own: "We prepared well as a team and once we got on the pitch it just didn't click. So it still, to this day, puzzles me. The ball wasn't up to the standards to be the World Cup ball. It wasn't great, but we had to deal with that. I knew, I could feel I wasn't playing well, and sometimes you try to do too much instead of keeping it simple."
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