In case you missed it, which you didn't, but in case you did, Wayne Rooney became England's all-time leading goal-scorer on Tuesday night.
As he thundered home his fiftieth goal for his country from the penalty spot, in front of a Wembley crowd who no doubt would have preferred to witness history being made with a fifty-yard screamer, we finally got to see how our nation would react to such a long-standing, long-inevitably-falling record finally being broken.
Rooney himself was clearly overwhelmed. Red of face and teary-eyed, he took in the rapturous appreciation of the crowd, presumably suppressing the urge to bow to all four corners of the stadium and request a microphone be thrown from the bench so that he could make a speech - that came later, with Football Association TV, in quite the televisual coup, securing exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the England changing-room, where Rooney received a hero's welcome from his teammates.
Meanwhile, the weird and wonderful world of social media was erupting. The football community, from Gary Lineker to David Beckham, Alan Shearer to Michael Owen offered their heartfelt congratulations, with many ordinary fans following suit. Yet there was another section of society, a dark, ungrateful underbelly, who poured scorn on Rooney's achievement. They were quick to point out his relatively abysmal performances at World Cup finals, choosing to omit unnecessary information such as the fact he's had to be wheeled off the plane on a stretcher just to take part in those tournaments; they belittled his accomplishment by suggesting that his goal tally had been massaged by friendlies, apparently not noticing that the man he has replaced at the top of the goal-scoring charts scored far more friendly goals than him.
Still, though these people's unpalatable views were largely drowned out, they do perhaps represent a more widely held opinion - he's no Sir Bobby Charlton.
If only someone else had broken Charlton's record before him, Rooney's achievement may not have been received with so much resentment in so many quarters. Had Lineker, Shearer or Owen reached fifty first, perhaps we would more readily congratulate Rooney. As it is, he has knocked a true legend, not to mention a true gent, off his perch. And this makes many of us angry. Charlton represents our glorious past, Rooney our bloated, mollycoddled present.
Poor Wayne. It's not his fault he was born in the eighties, rather than the thirties. But he was, and times have changed. Where Sir Bobby would ride to Old Trafford on the bus with the fans on a match day, his freshly-dubbined boots around his shoulders, a flat cap on his head, a pipe between his teeth and a loaf of Hovis under his arm, Wazza turns up in an expensive car with blacked-out windows and a personalised number-plate; where Sir Bobby's unruly, faintly ridiculous combover is endearing, Wayne's own fight for more fruitful follicles is a source of mockery and derision; while Rooney holidays in Las Vegas, Charlton probably shivered behind a windbreaker in Skegness; and where Charlton would celebrate a goal with an understated hop and a skip, Rooney tear-arses to the nearest camera and tells millions of people to "Fuck off."
Think about it, though. If Rooney were to get on a bus today, he'd be at best mobbed, at worst outright assaulted. Had the answer to a better head of hair been available to the young Sir Bobby, do you think he would have struggled on with just a comb and a pot of Brylcreem? Probably not. And, had Charlton become a multi-millionaire as a teenager, his face plastered over billboards and on the backs of newspapers around the world, labelled England's saviour from sixteen, his every move and misdeed revealed and dissected by the press, flocks of paparazzi not allowing him and his family a moment's privacy, who knows whether it would have led to the occasional angry outburst, the pressure and weight of it all spilling out in rare moments of spontaneous, un-media-trained frustration.
Rooney may not be the loveable hero we all think we deserve, he may be the footballing embodiment of middle-age spread, huffing and puffing his way to a place in the history books, a pale imitation of his younger self, and he may not be Sir Bobby Charlton, but he has achieved something remarkable in an era with its own challenges, a time so far removed from that of Charlton's that it is barely worth attempting to work out which of the two men is better than the other.
Why not just put envy and nostalgia to one side for a moment, for this moment, and simply say "Well done, Wayne."
