Low point: Rooney departs the field following his second red card in an England shirt

The best Rooney could hope for are a couple of run-outs in the second half of those games, but that is not going to replicate what he could expect come the latter stages of a major championship. It will not even be close.

There are other factors to consider. The message it sends out to the other forwards if Rooney is still selected among the 23 players who travel, and the possibility that he might not want to change a winning team if they start well. For Rooney to be involved it can’t exactly go disastrously.

Further to that are the concerns about how Rooney will cope with being a peripheral figure. He walked into the team hotel in Germany five years ago as his country’s self-anointed saviour.

‘The big man is back,’ he famously declared, having just about recovered from that metatarsal injury to come off the bench in the second group game before starting the third. On this occasion, though, he travels as the player whose stupidity has jeopardised England’s chances and someone who will be hugely frustrated as a spectator.

At the 2010 World Cup he was certainly not a good tourist, although that had as much to do with problems in his private life as his struggle for form and fitness.

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