For Wayne Rooney, this is what it has come to. After 116 caps, a record 53 goals, some exhilarating highs and excruciating lows, the England captain sat in a room of football writers at St George’s Park and faced a question he has never been asked in all his years in the game. Had he reached the end? And, realistically, would he ever get back to his best, approaching his 31st birthday, when more and more people were suspecting he was finished?

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He did not flinch. Maybe he suspected it was coming and he fronted it up, head-on, just as he did all the other questions about his alleged burnout, his removal from the Manchester United team and the awkwardness of him wanting to be a full-time midfielder when his manager, José Mourinho, was almost scornful of the idea.

Rooney did take great care to say he would abide by whatever Mourinho – and for that matter, England’s caretaker manager Gareth Southgate – decided but nobody could have misunderstood the message from a man who is, in effect, trying to save his career.

“I have heard a lot of people talking about transition – well, let me do it,” he said. “If that is what’s going to happen, let me do that. I feel I am not being given a chance, if that is the way I want to go in my career, to expand it. I am not being given that chance to go from there to there [attack to midfield]. It is all right talking about your career, saying you can extend it by doing this and that, but you need to be given the chance to do it.”

To avoid any confusion, this was not a direct challenge to Mourinho and he did also say “at the minute I’m happy playing where my managers want me to play”. Equally, there were other times when he sounded impatient – understandably, perhaps, when he was facing questions for the first time in his career that he might be shot.

No, Rooney insisted, he would not accept his decline was irreversible. A player who began his career at 16 refused to subscribe to the theory the sport had worn him down – “I’ve heard it, I don’t agree with it” – and there was the suspicion of a man straying dangerously close to being in denial when he was asked if he was worried about his general form. “No, to be honest,” Rooney said. “I felt I started the season OK. I had a bad game, certainly a very bad second half, against Watford. So I am not worried, no.

“I know I can do better but if I don’t play very well there is a massive overhype and it comes from everywhere. Listen, I am hard on myself. I am honest with myself. I speak to a couple of people after every game, my dad and my agent, and they are honest with me. If I haven’t played well, they tell me. But I know that anyway.

“During a game I can feel if I’m not playing well. I knew in the Watford game I didn’t play well. I didn’t deserve to play the next game, I understand that, and the team have done well since then, so I have to bide my time. But I will fight to get back in. I’m a fighter. I want to get back in the team. This is where I am at. But I am sure the people who know me know I will come back.”

Against this kind of backdrop, it is easy to understand why Rooney feels so aggrieved about Sam Allardyce’s comments that the England captain can play “wherever he wants” and the subsequent fallout. Allardyce, according to Rooney, “knew he made a mistake” but the damage had been done. “I suffered from that. I got battered.” It had created the impression, one of the journalists in his company told him, that he was involved in tactics and even possibly team selection. “Exactly,” Rooney said, “which couldn’t be further from the truth.” Danny Rose, in keeping with several players, had just told a separate group of journalists he had contacted Allardyce to send him his best wishes. Had Rooney? “No.”

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Allardyce did, however, play Rooney in the position he craves, whereas Mourinho made it clear, in his first press conference as United manager, that he would not get that privilege under him. Mourinho, to recap, could hardly have been more emphatic. “With me, he will never be a No6, playing 50 metres from goal. Yes, his passing is amazing but mine is also amazing without pressure. He will be a number nine, a number ten, or a number nine and a half, but never a number six or a number eight.”

Rooney evidently thinks that needs a rethink. “I feel I can control and dictate games from there,” he explained. “It’s obvious I’m not as quick as I was. You can always have a football brain, though, and I’ve got that. A lot is made of where I play, and how I play, and it gets a bit frustrating at times. There will come a time, if I’m not playing, when I might have to be a bit more selfish in terms of where I want to play and making that clear.

“If I was sitting here at 25 or 26 and we were talking about playing centre midfield or a deeper midfield role I wouldn’t want to play there, of course, but now I’m at a stage where that might be better suited to me. Again, it is down to the manager. I am not going to go in and say: ‘I have to play there’. I play where the manager asks me. We spoke at the start of the season and, as he said to you guys, he feels my best position is further forward, so that’s where I will play.”

Could he not tell Mourinho now if he thinks that is a mistake? “I don’t think it’s the time for me to be doing that. I’ve always put the team as more important. The team are doing well at the minute, so I have to bide my time.”

As for Mourinho’s comments that there was “a Wayne before the Slovakia game and a Wayne after the Slovakia game,” with the player possibly affected by criticism of his role, Rooney wrinkled his nose at that one. “I have had criticism a lot of times. You’ll have to ask him about that.”

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Rooney was sitting here as England’s highest scorer, nine caps short of equalling Peter Shilton’s record of 125, and four goals short of overtaking Sir Bobby Charlton’s goals record for United. Yet there is still the suspicion, in the unforgiving age of social media, that he is not fully appreciated. “By some people, yes; by others, no,” he said. “That’s football, isn’t it? You divide opinions. Listen, I am not a player who wants people to say how good he is. That’s not me. As long as people around me, and my manager, are happy, I’m happy.

“I love football and, in football, you have highs and lows. I still wake up every day and love what I am doing and I cannot imagine my life without football. I dread the day it ends. Any player who has played since he was a kid will say that. You speak to other players who have done that [stopped playing] and they say it is a weird feeling. You enjoy it while you can.”

Another player might retire from international football and devote himself to extending his club career. For Rooney, that has never been a serious consideration. “I love meeting up with England. Whether I am on the pitch or not, I feel I can help the players. If the manager turned around on Saturday [when England play Malta] and I was on the bench, of course I would want to play, but I am not going to say ’I am not playing for England again’. I would still turn up and try to get back in the team. I think I can benefit the younger players around the squad.”

Rooney does not sound like a man who thinks he has reached the end. “No,” he says. “I don’t enjoy it [not playing] but it is part of football. Does it gee you up? Of course it does. It’s like going to an audition when you get turned down – you want to prove yourself to people.

“I have no problem being left out. It’s a manager’s job and I understand that, but I will keep working until I get the chance to come back.”