Source: Daily_Mail
Rooney must learn from Gazza's fate and avoid such a waste of his gifts
On Thursday morning at 10 o'clock, Paul Gascoigne will climb to his feet in Newcastle Magistrates' Court to hear his sentence delivered. [LNB]Last month, he pleaded guilty to driving with an alcohol level of four times the legal limit and District Judge Stephen Earl warned him that all options 'up to and including a custodial sentence' were open. Judge Earl also said that a 12-week jail term was possible, given the level of alcohol recorded.[LNB]Last Wednesday, in a separate case, Gascoigne appeared before Northallerton magistrates to deny being four times the drink-drive limit at Leeming Bar, North Yorkshire, in February.[LNB] Fallen hero: Paul Gascoigne[LNB] He giggled a good deal and made jokes during the five-hour hearing. When the magistrates left the courtroom to discuss details of the case, he said: 'I bet they've got loads of sandwiches and that behind there!' At another break, he chuckled: 'It's like halftime, will we get oranges?' And when asked for his contact details, he replied: '999'.[LNB] Eventually, he was told by the chairman of the bench: 'This is a very serious matter, Mr Gascoigne. Very serious.' The trial was adjourned until December 13.[LNB] Now, Gascoigne was probably the most gifted English footballer of the past 25 years. A simple lad who was worshipped by a public who recognised his flaws yet revered his talent. When Bobby Robson famously described him as 'daft as a brush', he was supplying a fondly accurate character assessment.[LNB] This was the kid who wore plastic breasts on an open-top bus, the man-child who used to play table tennis against himself. The fact that he could also play football like a dream was simply a part of the package; the part that attracted the spivs and the chancers, the parasites who craved his company and revelled in his reflected glory.[LNB] The records insist that Gascoigne played on until he was 37. In fact, he left the best of his talent on the Wembley pitch some 13 years earlier when, witlessly motivated for an FA Cup final, he launched himself into a manic challenge and suffered cruciate ligament damage. He lost a season to that injury, another season to a broken leg and although he pulled together the strands of his genius for a remarkable series of performances at Euro 96, he was never the player he might have become.[LNB]Think about those squandered seasons. They were the times when Gascoigne was going to tell his story, to set his standards, to make his declaration. [LNB] Troubled times: Wayne Rooney[LNB] Those were the winters when he would have been wonderful and they flickered past in a daze of frustration and pain. He would never get them back. Which leads us, by a circuitous route, to Wayne Rooney. Now, Rooney does not welcome comparisons with Gascoigne; for one thing, they are far too easy and, for another, their situations are currently as different as a dented radiator and a train crash. [LNB]But the Manchester United player's recent behaviour has revived poignant memories of the older man. There is the wanton indiscipline, the rejection of civilised restraint, the reckless disdain for public disfavour. [LNB]For much of the past six months, Rooney has worn an expression of surly bewilderment; a young man at odds with the world and himself, permanently on the brink of a tantrum. Like Gascoigne on a bad day. United's decision to send him to Nike Town in Portland, Oregon, seems frankly bizarre. [LNB]The club's statement about Rooney undergoing 'a week of concentrated training and conditioning under the supervision of our medical and sports science staff' begs more questions than it answers.[LNB] Why does he need to travel to the Pacific coast of the United States, when he could find the same expertise, the same facilities and much the same weather in Carrington, Manchester? Nobody is saying but everybody is surmising. Rooney is 25 years old. Given the bulkiness of his build and his increasing propensity to pile on pounds, his diet and habits must be beyond reproach if he is to play for five years or more. And those five years will pass in a flash.[LNB] The turns and leaps, the sprints and challenges, all those hurdles which he instinctively clears will, in time, loom as high as fences. His gifts are obvious, yet so are the dangers. For things can go calamitously wrong, as Paul Gascoigne could tell him.[LNB] Poor Gazza, facing his fate on Thursday morning; hoping for the best, fearing the worst and wondering where they have gone, all those fair-weather friends. The ones who filled his glass and clapped his back and laughed at his jokes. Back in the distant days when the man was an idol and not a terrible warning.[LNB]For Mancini, being Italian is the least of his worriesUnder pressure: Roberto Mancinil[LNB]Given the ferocious competition, it's never easy to select the most self-serving remark made by a Premier League manager during the previous seven days.[LNB] But this week's undisputed champ is Roberto Mancini, who we are contractually obliged to call the 'beleaguered' manager of Manchester City.[LNB]Mancini was explaining why morale in the City camp remains excellent despite players exchanging insults on the pitch, others drowning their sorrows at a student drinking party, the highest-paid star driving home from a critical match at half-time and the unfortunate matter of three defeats in a row.[LNB] 'The tabloids rage on us because City are headed by an Italian,' he observed.[LNB] 'I'm sorry to say but the English are nationalists in football.' [LNB]Well, nobody can say that our game is untainted by Little Englanders, and we have frequently derided them in this corner of the newspaper, but this time I fear that the man in the scarf is on shaky ground.[LNB]A glance at the Premier League reveals that half of the 20 clubs are in non-English ownership. Fifteen Premier League managers are, in football terms, non-English. And the national manager was born not in Giggleswick but in the Italian province of Gorizia.[LNB] So I fear that Mancini will have to look elsewhere for the reasons for City's current discomfort. And I suspect that his employers are already looking.[LNB]Nick Faldo, still the world's No1 egoFor some people, Sir Nick Faldo was our greatest golfer, an implacable perfectionist with a God-given talent. For others, he was the most inept bumbler ever to captain the European Ryder Cup team. But all agree that Faldo has an ego which age cannot wither. [LNB]Last week, Lee Westwood moved above Tiger Woods to become the world's No1 golfer. The system of selection is enormously complex yet patently fair. It rewards consistent excellence over a two-year period and it demonstrates Westwood's extraordinary progress. [LNB]So how did the last European to hold the No1 place greet the news: with genuine pleasure in a staggering achievement? Not quite. Faldo said: 'It's interesting how times have changed, how you can get to be No1 without winning a major. [LNB]'It's weird because I had won four majors before I got to world No1. We'll see if it inspires Lee to better things like pulling off that first major.' [LNB]It was classic Faldo: gauche, clumsy and hilariously self-regarding. Westwood may never attain the heights which Faldo once achieved. Yet he is an infinitely more admirable man.[LNB]P.S.In Manchester on Saturday, two of our finest warriors will contest the heavyweight championship of the world. Or at least, that chunk of it that others don't much want. David Haye, with his questionable chin and crude and tasteless line in self-promotion, goes in with Audley Harrison, who boasts the same defects and was once licked by a Belfast taxi driver. Come Sunday morning, one of these hapless scufflers will be anointed the successor to Sullivan and Corbett, Dempsey and Tunney, Ali and Tyson. Some say that boxing is dead. And they may very well be right. [LNB] [LNB] Explore more:People: Paul Gascoigne, David Haye, Bobby Robson, Wayne Rooney, Lee Westwood, Nick Faldo Places: Belfast, Manchester
