The Times:
They will have loved this, the naysayers and knee-jerk merchants who peddle the fallacy that Wayne Rooney is a burnt-out talent.
Again he did not score, once more he was short on magic, best of all he was substituted when his country needed saviours. Redemption beckoned in the second half when Rooney killed Peter Crouch's pass and volleyed for goal from spitting range. Yet Jane Nikoloski, chief among Macedonia's heroes, saved. It was Jane's day, not Wayne's. It hasn't been for a while.
But heroes who have delivered deserve the payback of faith. Five indifferent games for Manchester United have not made Rooney a fallen prince. But you wonder what nonsense the doubters will summon next. One supposedly sensible newspaper offered space to a novelist who suggested that because last week Rooney grew a George Best-like beard, ergo he must be about to go off the same set of rails. Scientific stuff.
The idea of Rooney in crisis should be taken no more seriously than as an example of this dire Fleet Street tradition: the scare story. He's young, had a bad injury and a long suspension, and was playing quite brilliantly as recently as six games ago, on the first day of the season versus Fulham.
Critics twitter about him not scoring for England since Euro 2004 — in competitive games, thereby ignoring two virtuoso goals in friendlies against Argentina and Denmark. The scoreless sequence includes the World Cup where, until his red card, his contribution so early into his rehabilitation from a broken foot was heroic. The other matches involved, until yesterday, were seven World Cup qualifiers. In two of those games Rooney hit the post, in another he forced an own goal by Northern Ireland with a bit of skill, he was man of the match three times. Twelve months ago he played so well against Poland that Zico likened him to Pele. So there it is: Rooney's "decline".