Wayne Rooney says he won’t be an England great until he wins tournament

• ‘The ultimate is to win a trophy,’ insists captain .
• Sir Bobby Charlton to present 100th golden cap.

 

  
     Wayne Rooney is about to enter an illustrious club of centurions but does not think he can be regarded as an England great until he wins a tournament with the national side.
Rooney, who will become just the ninth England player to reach 100 caps on Saturday when he leads the team out for their Euro 2016 qualifier against Slovenia at Wembley, said: “To get 100 caps for England – there’s not many players who have done it – would be a great achievement. I’ll be proud to join that club and is something that myself and my family would be honoured by.
“But I could sit here saying I’ve got 200 caps and 100 goals for my country, but the ultimate is to win a trophy and that’s what we all want to do.
“That’s why we play football, to win. That’s the target and hopefully sometime soon we can achieve that.”
The England captain is closing in on another series of landmarks. The Manchester United striker has his sights set on Peter Shilton’s record of 125 caps and he is six goals short of Sir Bobby Charlton’s all-time scoring record.

      To top the record of Charlton, who will present Rooney with a special golden cap before kick-off on Saturday, would be another proud moment for the striker.
“To be England’s greatest ever goals scorer would be massive,” Rooney told the match programme.
“The record has stood for so many years, there have been plenty of players who haven’t been able to break it. I’m still relatively young and believe I can do it and hopefully that record will come.
“Obviously I’m not going to be as big a legend as Sir Bobby Charlton – he’s won the World Cup with England – so to eclipse that I’d have to win the World Cup, which would be a massive achievement.”
Rooney has played for four England managers and 10 captains but the one player who stands out is Steven Gerrard.
“It’s well-known that the two of us have been close and he’s been a massive help to me,” Rooney said of the 114-cap midfielder who retired from international football after the World Cup.
“Even when he was captain I believed that after he was captain I’d get the nod to take over from him, so I watched how he prepared himself, how he prepared for games, how he was around the hotel and in the media. I took a lot from him.”