The Warm-Up: Southgate makes the big call, Benteke gets to work

The moment is finally here. It’s simultaneously felt inevitable, the only sensible thing to do yet also like it would never come. For three weeks after he was consigned to the Manchester United bench by Jose Mourinho, a similarly brash and brazen manager has decided his starting XI is better off without Wayne Rooney.

Gareth Southgate confirmed on Monday that Rooney would not be playing from the start against Slovenia in Tuesday’s World Cup qualifier, with Eric Dier coming in ostensibly for tactical reasons, and Jordan Henderson will take that most meaningless of meaningful bits of cloth, the captain’s armband.

Rooney himself carried out a pretty stonking bout of ‘fronting up’ by talking to the press anyway, despite his canning, and promised that this wouldn’t be the end of things for him, and that he would not take his leave of international football just because he’s been dropped. “I believe I can come back from this,” Rooney said. “I am 30 years of age. I am not 35 or 36 where you are thinking: ‘Can you get back from it?’ I will keep working and I have said before that I will not stop playing for England and start going to Dubai for a few days in the international break.”

For Southgate’s part, he seems to have handled this one perfectly. He offered the usual platitudes in public for a player who is clearly still influential in the dressing room. He knew that dropping Rooney straight away would be seen as a ‘statement’ of the sort that could backfire, so left him in the team for the Malta game because, well, why not? It’s just Malta, who England would’ve beaten if Southgate himself had played in midfield. After the game he said nice enough things about Rooney, while softening the ground by criticising the team as a whole for the bad things Rooney did. And now he’s out, everyone has saved a little bit of face, the England captain is dropped with about as little fuss as possible.

Farewell then, Wayne, and well done Gareth.

What can you do in seven seconds? (Keep your answers clean – this is a family morning round-up of the news in football). You could run 70m, and by ‘you’ we do of course mean ‘Usain Bolt’ or ‘a horse’. You could probably down a pint, if you were an absolute lad and a legend. You could pick a hole in any of Donald Trump’s arguments. And if your name is Christian Benteke, and you’re playing against an obliging Gibraltar side, you can score a goal in international football. Belgium would go on to win 6-0, which given they managed one goal after 0.12% of the game had elapsed, only another five seems vaguely disappointing.

A slightly strange game in Amsterdam on Monday, as France beat and indeed largely dominated Netherlands without really ever looking that good. Perhaps it’s a sad statement about the way of things now that you can dominate the Dutch and still win with relative ease. Still, Paul Pogba was really good, scoring the only goal, and maybe that’s all you really need.​

Elsewhere, Portugal continue their fine form apace. People were surprised, shocked, alarmed and stunned when they won Euro 2016, but their form in the opening World Cup qualifiers suggests that might not be a one-off. Well, if you ignore the defeat to Switzerland, anyway. Still, they’ve now beaten Andorra and the Faroe Islands, 6-0 both, and if that isn’t a sign that a team’s dominance is cemented in then we don’t know what is. Or something like that.

It’s been a curious old week for York City. On Tuesday they lost 6-1 to Guiesley, a semi-pro team who were bottom of the league at the time. On Wednesday Jackie McNamara released a statement saying that if there wasn’t a ‘positive result’ in their game against Braintree then he would resign. That game turned out to be a draw, so after a couple of days searching his soul, McNamara was as good as his word, but for reasons passing understanding, he was asked to stay on to keep things ticking over until they find a replacement. How’s your CV looking?

Hats off to Vasili Berezutski, the Russian defender who on Sunday won his 100th cap for his country this week in their friendly against Costa Rica. A remarkable achievement, one that should be celebrated, and not just because he looks like he might pull your arms off and beat you bloody with the stumps if you don't celebrate with him. Here, have some cake. No, seriously, here - have some cake. And the Russian Federation was planning to have a ceremony to commemorate. However...

...that ceremony was called off after Berezutski scored an own-goal as part of a first-half meltdown for the Russians, capping his evening off with something of a flourish by conceding a late penalty. The Costa Ricans converted it, and they won 4-3. Such is the rich tapestry of life...

With the end looking fairly nigh-ish for Wayne Rooney, let’s remember what an absolutely exhilarating thing he was when he arrived in English football. Here’s his debut for Manchester United, in which he scored a remarkable hat-trick against Fenerbahce in the Champions League.

You’ll need a subscription to read it, but stumping up for George Caulkin’s piece in The Times on Phil Giles, the die-hard Newcastle fan who’s become part of the new analytics-driven regime at Brentford, is more than worth it.

If you, like the Warm-Up, have been despairing about international week and yearning for the return to the same-old, same-old grind of domestic football, then fear not, for it is nearly over. The last round of internationals for this round is tonight, featuring of course England v Slovenia, but elsewhere Scotland are off to Slovakia, Northern Ireland play Germany, while Norway will see how many goals they can run in against San Marino. Plus, if you’d prefer something a little grittier, there’s a sole League Two fixture, as Notts County face Morecambe.

Wednesday’s Warm-Up will come courtesy of Alex Chick, who is absolutely psyched for Lithuania vs Malta.