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Restless England striker ready to show he can play a leading role at a major tournament – starting with Ukraine

At some point on Monday night, Wayne Rooney will go to his room in the England team hotel, just a long throw from the Donbass Arena in Donetsk, and go through the same process that has been part of his life since breaking into the Everton team at the age of 16.

It is the same routine, based on "imagery rehearsal", that David James used to employ. James would imagine the ball coming to him and then all the different ways he could catch, parry or punch it away. "I'd wake up in the morning, get breakfast or whatever, jump in the shower and then just stand there for 10 minutes going through it. Then, in the car, stop at the traffic lights, catch a few crosses and go on."

In Rooney's case, the routine is even more meticulously planned. If he has never played at the stadium before, he will look at photographs. He will make last-minute checks with the kitman. "Ask what colour kit we are wearing, find out what colour the opponents are wearing."

Then, last thing at night, he goes through every variation of how to beat the goalkeeper. "Get good thoughts, good moments, in my head. Visualise scoring goals. Different scenes over and again." It keeps him awake sometimes. "I'm in bed. It's difficult getting to sleep. I'm too excited."

Rooney has left Hotel Stary and made the short journey across Rynek Glowny, Krakow's picture-postcard square, for his first audience with the media since arriving in Poland. As always where he is concerned, it has been planned like a military operation. "Sometimes I'd like to be able to walk down to a coffee shop and have a coffee but it's difficult when you have 10 to 15 people following you." Yet he also makes the point, more than once, that it is "a happy camp" and the players are enjoying being based in such a vibrant city. "We went to Austria for two weeks before the last World Cup," he says. "By the time we got to the tournament, your head had gone a bit already …"

You wonder what his head is like now. Frustrated, almost certainly. Excited, mostly; desperate to get going. He has found it difficult, he admits, watching England's first two games. "When you're playing, you can always do something to change a game. In the stands, there's nothing you can do. No control. It's been hard, but it's my fault."

Eight months have passed since that kick on Montenegro's Miodrag Dzudovic and the red card that threatened to ruin his summer. "Even now, I can't explain it. Similar to the one in 2006 in the World Cup [against Portugal's Ricardo Carvalho]. It happened. It's not something I set out to do. I didn't think: 'Right, I'm going to kick this player.' It just happened. I understood straight away it was a mistake."

He is acutely aware it could have been worse. "If it had stayed at a three-game ban I wouldn't have expected to be here. I'm just really grateful [Fabio] Capello fought so hard when we both went over to Switzerland, appealed it, got lucky and got it down to two games. He basically said: 'If there's a 1% chance of getting the ban down to two games we have to try.' Obviously, I appreciate that."

The cameras have zoomed in, against France and Sweden, but it is when you are close up and hear the impatience in his voice you realise how desperate Rooney is for this Ukraine game. His new grade-one crop brings to mind the scene in Taxi Driver when Robert De Niro's character shaves his hair to help rid himself of some of that inner turmoil. Rooney did not go quite so far – that hair is precious, as we know – but there is more to it than just missing two games. His England career, he admits, is a source of intense frustration.

The disappointments have certainly accumulated since his assassin-faced baby role, aged 18, at Euro 2004 when Sven-Goran Eriksson described him as a modern-day Pelé. In 2006 there was the red card against Portugal, then the non-qualification for Euro 2008 and two years later the World Cup in South Africa. "I had a bad tournament," he says. "Sometimes you just have to hold up your hands and admit it."

Rooney has no appetite to go through each failure forensically but, overall, he knows he has underachieved. "My last [tournament] goal was back in Euro 2004," he says. "The things that have happened … I didn't want them to happen, no one wants that kind of thing to happen but sometimes they do. As a player, you have bad moments. Sometimes you have to go through those bad moments to experience the good moments."

He comes into this tournament on the back of the most prolific scoring form of his professional life, with 34 goals for Manchester United last season. His is a revealing answer, however, when he is asked whether that constitutes his best-ever season. "No," he says bluntly. "We won nothing." It is the answer of the team player, rather than the star individual.

Rooney has to be asked a second time to assess his own performance. "I don't know. There were times when I could have played better but I was scoring goals, whereas in other seasons I have played better but not scored goals. So it's difficult to say. A forward's job is to score goals so, scoring-wise, it probably was [my best] but, in terms of my overall game, I'm still learning and still trying to get better."

In part, that takes in his occasionally suspect temperament. Rooney has suffered the consequences of his red card in Montenegro but he was booked only once in the Premier League last season and it was the penultimate game.

Apart from that, there was only one other yellow card, in a Champions League tie in September. "I think I have done that [curbed his temper]. What happened in Montenegro was a mistake; I understood that and apologised to the guy. But I have no problems with my attitude or my temperament."

Rooney being Rooney, it is probably better to reserve judgment. As he admits himself, he does not know where the loss of control originates sometimes. It just happens and Roy Hodgson has already talked to him about not being too wound up when the game starts. "We spoke about that today," Rooney says. "I think it's important that the first 20 minutes I feel my way into the game."

He has already been guaranteed a place in the team, despite Andy Carroll and Danny Welbeck both scoring against Sweden. In fact, Hodgson has said there would be "a riot" among his players if Rooney was kept on the bench. "If Roy has said that, then great," Rooney says, though he is keen to praise the other players. "They have done a great job getting the four points from the two games. I'm not going to win the Euros on my own."

Nonetheless, there is the sense that "the big man is back", to use the Rooney phrase from the 2006 World Cup. He has denied that quote in the past but, reminded of it again, there is a sheepish smile. No more pretending. "I don't think I could say that now Andy Carroll's in the squad … you all know I'm a confident person. That's been in me since I was a young boy. I've been confident in everything I've done."

Confident enough that he talks of qualifying from Group D and winning the tournament.

Germany, he says, look "strong, well-organised" and he has been particularly impressed with Mario Gomez – "a goalscorer, quite similar to [Ruud] van Nistelrooy a few years ago." Spain, England's possible quarter-final opponents, have "a completely different style – you could see it in the Ireland game, they had 800 to 900 passes, they tire you out, wear you down." Otherwise, the player who has impressed him the most is an unexpected one. "I thought [Andrey] Arshavin did well for Russia. I was quite surprised. It looks like he has [lost weight]."

Now it is Rooney's turn.

England will be in all-white, Ukraine in yellow and blue. Rooney will lie in bed visualising a glorious night, then try to turn it into reality. "It's obviously paid off at club level but not so much at international level. Hopefully it will this time. I've trained well and I'm ready to play. I just want to play." Read More

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