England’s No10 says he feels better than he has for years and believes if he plays his best football then it will help the team raise their game for the World Cup

At some point last summer, David Moyes, in his new position as Manchester United manager, invited Wayne Rooney to his house and told him matter-of-factly he had “gone soft”. It was, as Rooney now recounts, a frank conversation full of home truths, and one of them cut to the bone. “Do you think you’re a top player?” Moyes asked. Rooney replied that he did. Then Moyes hit him with the killer line. “Then why have Chelsea offered only £25m for you?”

One of the good things about Rooney is that he can respond well to the short-sharp-shock treatment sometimes. At United, he went for extra training, including spells in the boxing gym with his old mates back in Liverpool. Until Christmas, he was the best player at Old Trafford. “Different players have different mentalities,” he says now. “I’ve always responded well if I’m not doing well. If someone is shouting at me, I have no problem with that. You see some players and it really affects them. It’s not something I get concerned about.”

He makes the point as a way of showing that he can handle the kind of criticism and scrutiny that has come his way recently. Rooney, for the most part, can brush it off. At other times, it hits a nerve. “I always remember someone commenting that I hadn’t scored for six games,” he cites as an example. “What they didn’t say was that I was playing as a deep-lying midfielder for those six games.”

More hurtful was the recent critique of Paul Scholes, essentially describing him as a player in decline. Scholes’s one-liners can be every bit as brutal as his infamous tackles and this one alleged Rooney, at 28, had peaked two years ago.

Scholes went on to question whether Roy Hodgson would have the nerve to drop Rooney if he did not play well, and it is from there that everything has reached the point that Phil Neville, another former Manchester United team-mate, now talks of a “witch-hunt” against the striker.

What can be said with certainty is that Rooney and Scholes are not close. “He was a great player at Man United, but I’ve never had his phone number and he’s never had mine,” Rooney says. “I’m sure he’s upset a lot of people at Man United because they see me as worthy of signing a new [five-year] deal at the club, so they obviously have a different opinion to Paul. But you’ll have to ask him. I don’t agree with what he’s said. Whether they are valid comments or not, you’ll have to ask him.”

Scholes, he has noted, was rarely this forthright in interviews as a player. “It’s very strange, very strange, but I’m sure he has his reasons for it. He’s probably the best player I’ve ever played with, so I’m not going to knock him as a player, but I don’t agree with his point. I do find it strange.”

The peculiar thing here is that Rooney is smiling. A few years ago, he might have gone further with his response, but there is something different about him going into this tournament.

He has been seeing Dr Steve Peters, the psychiatrist who has joined England’s backroom staff, and he says there has been an immediate benefit.

“I’ve spoken to him a few times. If you look at the achievements in his life, it’s incredible really. I found him great and easy to talk to and he will be a big help. I’ve been putting myself under too much pressure [in previous tournaments]. Maybe you guys, the media, have put me under a lot of pressure and I’ve tried to respond to that. This time I haven’t, and I’m not going to. I’m going to enjoy it. I’ve learned that I have to enjoy this one because, if I’m honest, I haven’t enjoyed the last ones. They’ve not gone well and all of a sudden you’re looking back, they’ve gone and you didn’t enjoy it.

“This one I’m going to enjoy, regardless of what happens. I’m going to make sure I take positive memories from it. Because there’s no point in doing it if you’re not enjoying it.”

It is an interesting point thinking back to South Africa four years ago and the way Rooney cut an unhappy, detached figure. “The truth is I missed my family. That was the hardest thing. This time, I’ve learned to deal with that. Of course, I will miss them, but I’ve learned how to deal with that side of things. I’m older now and they will be over here eventually.”

There is a wince, too, thinking back to that wretched goalless draw against Algeria in Capetown and his outburst – frustrated, unhappy, homesick – into a television camera about the reaction from England’s fans. “It was stupid of me. I understand that now, but it was a frustrating time. Of course I regret it, but it was in the heat of the moment. It happened, and you move on. Listen, I’ll do my best for England and I’m sure the fans will see that.”

That begins in Manaus on Saturday, and Rooney certainly sounds confident. “The Italian defenders I’ve played against tend to read the game really well. They put themselves in good positions but, if I’m honest, when you play a high tempo against them they struggle. The Italian league is nowhere near the tempo of the Premier League. Even when we played AC Milan and [Alessandro] Nesta and [Paolo] Maldini were their centre-halves they really struggled when we played a high tempo. If we can do that, I am sure we will give them problems.”

He has never scored in a World Cup and, by his own admission, this is probably his last chance to leave his mark on the competition. Yet he also wants to make the point that he is not trying to create his own legacy. “I’m not a player who needs that. Cristiano Ronaldo … he has to have that. You admire him for that. You can see how he is. He wants his moments. I’m more about winning as a team. It’s more important to me. I’ve won the PFA player of the year, and it’s nowhere near as good as winning a trophy with Manchester United.”

So was it true: had he gone soft? Moyes had noted Rooney had picked up only one yellow card the previous season. It was time to get the old Wayne back, he told him. “I went to see him,” Rooney says. “There were different things going on at the time, different issues, and he gave me his honest opinion. He felt I had lost a bit of aggression – which I was asked to do [by Sir Alex Ferguson], by the way. He said he wanted me to find that aggression back.

“I thought about it a lot [the booking count]. It wasn’t really me. Maybe there are times when you have to try to lift the crowd with a tackle – not a stupid one, obviously, but a run back and a tackle can lift the fans and even turn a game round. Everything got blown up, though, after the sending off against Montenegro. Before that, my record in terms of discipline and bookings wasn’t that bad. Then it was blown up and I was asked to stop that [aggression].”

Maybe, he says, a balance can be struck. “I want to do well. I know that if I play well, the team will play well. And I feel great, better than I have for years. I’m ready for this tournament. I’ve had time to prepare with the team. I’ve gone into previous tournaments with little niggles or different things, but I’ve not missed a session this time.” His advice for the younger players? “Enjoy it.”