This from Daily Mail:
'A precocious talent nurtured in the North West of England has inspired his country into the quarter-finals. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
You all know the story by now. A fresh faced teenager, coming into Euro 2004 off the back of a promising, if perhaps stop-start season in the Premiership explodes onto the world stage with a series of breath-taking virtuoso performances. No longer just a kid with potential in spades; a true star has been born.
But this coming of age story is not rooted in a personality-defining Croxteth upbringing. It has an altogether more Latin, or more specifically, Portuguese flavour. For amid the deserved hype surrounding England's wunderkind, the hosts too have reason to be revelling in the precocity of youth. Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo, a mere eight months Rooney's senior, may not have hit the headlines with such veracity as 'Our Wayne' but this summer's jamboree on his native soil is already proving to be one to remember.'
This from Oliver Kay in The Times:
'When England’s players look back in years to come on the night they performed like the Lions of Lisbon, they will forget the bad. David Beckham, a peripheral figure throughout, will recall an evening on which he performed as a true captain, providing leadership and quality when it mattered. Darius Vassell will remember the night he was called from the chorus line to step into the shoes of the 18-year-old star turn. And Ashley Cole will look back fondly on how he remained true to his word and nullified Cristiano Ronaldo.
The real version is slightly different. As heroically as he and others battled last night in the Stadium of Light, Cole should not kid himself into believing that he fulfilled his pre-match promise to quell the threat of Ronaldo. In the build-up, he had recalled how, when playing for Arsenal against Manchester United at Old Trafford last season, he "gave him a hard tackle and he was gone", when he should have paid more heed to his experience in the first quarter of the same match, when the Portuguese teenager repeatedly embarrassed him.'