James Lawton: Time to give Rooney his due, but he's no Bobby Charlton

Indeed, after his two-goal subjection of Scotland at Celtic Park you might be excused the idea that it has already happened.

"Time we learned to love Rooney," declared one national newspaper not famous for pouring the milk of human kindness.

"Of course he is an England great," gushed Jamie Carragher. "He is going to be our greatest goalscorer."

Certainly he has embraced the leadership of his country with a stirring passion.

Wherever you turn there seems to be another uplifting image of the man who many had begun to believe some time ago blew his destiny as one of the world's most significant footballers. Who, decently, could douse this Rooney parade with even a drop of wintry rain?

Well, his Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal might be a somewhat more dispassionate observer if this one-man bandwagon falters against Arsenal at the Emirates tomorrow night. He might wonder if just a little bit too much is being made of too little and, who knows, he may not be alone.

Perspective

One of the game's more reliable judges, Graeme Souness, has made his stab at perspective, saying, "I would not get carried away with Rooney. He was just scoring goals against Championship players against Scotland. Rooney has been a great player for England, but then when you use that word to describe him, Messi and Ronaldo are on different planets."

So was the man whose England record Rooney is chasing down. This is not to dismiss the possibility that at the age of 29 Rooney is reaching out for some late but impressive redemption.

You can do no more than inhabit your time and place and since the crushing disillusionment of England's dismal World Cup performance in Brazil, Rooney has clearly been filled with an ambition to be both a good captain and a committed, consistent performer.

But then when, as seems so inevitable, he does finally pass Charlton's mark of 49 goals in 106 games, will he really have achieved historic parity with his England and United predecessor?

The current clamour says yes but it is, of course, a nonsense. It is the kind of perversion of football history that so recently declared that Spain were the greatest international football team ever assembled and that the Brazil of Pele and Gerson and Tostao was just the product of some disordered memory.

In fact there is a reality behind today's blizzard of acclaim for the new Rooney. It is that, despite the current revisionism, he has yet to set a foot on the kind of terrain that had long been occupied by Charlton when he played his last game for England, a quarter-final of the World Cup in the broiling heat of Mexico.

Charlton was withdrawn in the second half against Germany when manager Alf Ramsey, desperate to keep him fresh for what seemed to be a certain semi-final, considered, errantly, that the immediate job was done.

It was the poignant postscript to a career acknowledged for its depth and brilliance in every corner of the football world.

Now we are told Rooney, who is just three years younger than when Charlton left the international stage, is a mere three goals from sharing such distinction - a mark that may fall in a European Championship qualifier against Lithuania or a friendly in Dublin.

It is a mathematical madness, the tallying of apples and oranges, of the functional and the sublime.

Rooney is of course a footballer of exceptional talent, a player who in his time has excited the enthusiasm of some of the game's most demanding observers.

When John Giles first saw him he said that here was a boy with the potential to join the elite of world football, someone for whom the mysteries of the game seemed to have been revealed around about the time he left the cradle.

When the prodigy scored a goal that shattered the Arsenal Invincibles at Goodison Park, Arsene Wenger said that this was the best young English player he had ever seen.

When England manager Sven Goran Eriksson gave him his competitive debut against a Turkey who had finished third in the World Cup, he took hold of the game in a way beyond the powers of his super-star colleague David Beckham.

And then, still a teenager, he was luminous before injury cut him down at Euro 2004 in Portugal.

That was the burden of expectation Rooney created for himself - and it is why in all of today's celebration of his run of success against, let's be honest, essentially soft opposition, it is so difficult to be detached from all the subsequent disappointments.

He was peripheral in Brazil. He was morose and hugely underwhelming in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Four years earlier he retreated from Germany with the red card that came when he stamped on Ricardo Carvalho and his United team-mate Cristiano Ronaldo winked knowingly at his bench.

Two years ago he arrived late in the Euro finals after losing his head in a qualifier against Montenegro.

These are not the antecedents of a sure-fire national hero. Nor, you may say, should they be used in a way that slights the degree of his current commitment to the cause of club and country.

Rooney, of course, deserves credit for his recent endeavours and only the meanest of spirits would seek to begrudge him his due.

Admirable

No-one is immune from the question of whether he has made the best of himself and certainly it is no hardship congratulating Rooney for his current pursuit of this admirable objective.

He cannot re-make the past but he can reach out for the gifts that from time to time he has quite seriously mislaid. Right now he is doing precisely this.

But we should not elevate him at the cost of reputations won in different and, let's say it, in some cases more demanding circumstances.

Bobby Charlton ignited his team and his nation with a superb goal on the way to a World Cup final and but for a managerial miscalculation he might have done it once more four years later.

Rooney, given his background, faces a somewhat more demanding haul as he heads for his 30th birthday. If he leads England to the 2018 World Cup finals in Russia he will be the same age as Charlton was in Mexico. He will be honoured for his attempt to re-impose his gifts at a dangerously late hour.

It should be enough to praise, even for the more excitable members of the canonisation committee.