Jermaine Jenas exclusive: Wayne Rooney's FA Cup heroics proved me wrong - he has to start for England at Euro 2016
Yahoo Sport's global football ambassador admits Wayne Rooney is a new player since dropping into midfield.
Earlier in the season I went on record saying I didn't think Wayne Rooney should start for England in Euro 2016. Today I feel like a referee coming out to explain himself after making a bad decision. I hold my hands up: I was wrong.
Watching the Manchester United captain play in midfield since he returned from injury in the past few weeks has changed my mind, and his performance in the FA Cup final summed up why.
Wayne has proved that, when he plays in that deeper position, he is still one of England's best players and he could be the difference in France this summer. Rooney is simply too good, and too influential, to leave out.
Just as in United's FA Cup semi-final win against Everton, Rooney was the standout performer in the final and it showed how much the trophy meant to him. It was a real leader's performance. When United needed him after conceding to Jason Puncheon's 77th-minute goal, it was Rooney who dragged them back into it with a fabulous run leading to Juan Mata's equaliser.
That's what they mean when they talk about grabbing the game by the scruff of the neck. Wayne wasn't prepared to let this opportunity slip away. At the third attempt, he was desperate to win in the FA Cup final.
When I spoke to Wayne before the game last week, I asked him whether he thought he could still play up front for England - and he said he could. But he also said he feels he can influence the game more from deeper positions.
At the start of this season, we found out very quickly that, while Rooney could still hold the ball up as a striker, defenders were no longer scared of him. Or more specifically, they weren't scared of him running in behind them because they knew they were quicker than him. That meant they could afford to take risks and get in front of Wayne, which puts him at a massive disadvantage.
But playing in midfield, he becomes far more dangerous again because he's more difficult to mark.
In some way it's comparable to the way Lionel Messi plays. Now, let me state categorically that Rooney is not Messi, so don't bother writing in calling me a lunatic. Obviously, Rooney has never matched the number of goals that Messi scores for Barcelona. But one thing they do have in common, especially in Rooney's new role, is that Messi actually plays very deep.
He doesn't play in midfield, but his freedom to go wherever he wants means he often drops into deep areas where people can't mark him, enabling him to time his runs into the box however he wants.
Similarly, Rooney has always been deadly from anywhere deeper than 25 yards out, whether providing assists or scoring himself when he arrives late in the box.
I thought one of the things he had lost was an ability to go past players, but he complete debunked that theory when he created Mata's goal against Crystal Palace. He ghosted past three or four players as if they weren't there.
But thing that shocked me most about Wayne's display was his fitness levels. He hasn't played for large periods this season, but he went through extra-time as if it was nothing.
To go from centre-forward to centre-midfield is a shock to the system. It's totally different and you need a big engine. When you're up front you're sprinting and then resting, but in midfield you don't stop running. There's no resting involved. But Rooney looked comfortable doing that. I knew he was fit, but I didn't realise he was that fit.
People had been writing off Rooney as a striker, but this midfield role reinvents him.
You can't read too much into England's performance in yesterday's friendly against Turkey, but even then I was looking at the performance thinking how much more dangerous Rooney would have made us.
He's comfortable on the ball, he's unselfish, he can obviously score goals and he knows what strikers want - and can provide it.
He could easily go and play in midfield for another three or four years for club and country. Not only will it prolong his career, it will also make him better.
The only two players I would not dream of taking out of England's midfield are Eric Dier and Dele Alli. Dier has to play in front of the back four, while Alli has shown he can open teams up playing just behind the striker (or strikers if Roy Hodgson plays two up front).
But that doesn't have to be at the expense of Rooney. Wayne is a player who can go and pick up the ball from the back four, he can hit any kind of pass you want and he has shown he can even play box-to-box. He could play on the left or right of a diamond, or more centrally. However Hodgson decides to do it, the point is that you have to get Rooney into that team.
In the next couple of years I believe we are going to see a better Rooney than we have in the last couple. He might even score more goals from midfield because he's not going to be fighting with defenders anymore. He can pick his runs and have more freedom to be creative.
He will also be under less pressure. In this European Championships, for instance, he might be captain of the team but the focus is now on other players like Harry Kane, Jamie Vardy and Alli. For once Rooney can just blend in, and he will make all of those players around him better.
