The Indie:
Manchester United have conceded defeat in their dispute with the Football Association over Wayne Rooney and will not send a doctor to Germany this week to check up on the fitness of the 20-year-old. But Sven Goran Eriksson still has to wait on the decision of his own fitness coach, Ivan Carminati, who does not yet believe that the striker is ready to play against Trinidad & Tobago tomorrow.
There was another 24 hours of intrigue around the England striker yesterday, an issue that was further clouded by an interview with Carminati, who worked with Eriksson when he was a club manager in Italy, in which he suggested that Rooney was not "100 per cent fit". Carminati spoke to an Italian broadcaster and his words contradict a prevailing mood that Rooney is ready to play.
Certainly that is how the player himself feels after he came through a full training session with the England squad yesterday. Now that United have distanced themselves from the dispute the only obstacle to Rooney's involvement, it has been suggested, is the FA chief executive, Brian Barwick, who is eager not to anger the player's club by bringing him back too soon.
However, the pressure not to play Rooney is certainly not coming from United, who have resigned themselves to whatever decision Eriksson chooses to make. After Rooney's 7 June scan, at which Eriksson refused to sign up to a specialist's advice that the player should not play in the group stages, United were offered the "courtesy" of sending a doctor to check on his condition. As they felt that this doctor's advice would be ignored they decided it would not be an option worth taking.
Eriksson's quandary is that he desperately wants Rooney to have had some match time ahead of the knockout phase. If he is relying on Carminati's advice, and Eriksson has already dismissed Professor Angus Wallace's suggestion that the player sit out the group stages, then it will not be until the Sweden game on 20 June that Rooney plays. He is likely to make an appearance as a substitute.
The Sun (with the headline 'Sven does a Roo turn):
Wayne Rooney is at the centre of a row which is set to rule him out of the clash with Trinidad & Tobago tomorrow.
Sven Goran Eriksson is to do a U-turn after originally telling the striker he would be a sub — and Rooney is furious.
The FA fear Manchester United will take legal action if Rooney were to break down in the game as he recovers from his broken metatarsal.
United have not got involved in the argument this week. But manager Alex Ferguson has already made it clear he did not want his star striker to play in any of the group games.
He warned England chief Eriksson that if he ignored him then it would be on the Swede's head.
Now the bigwigs of Soho Square have clearly intervened.
It is known that FA chief executive Brian Barwick has discussed the situation with his opposite number at United, David Gill, who backed Ferguson's position.