Maybe a little hint of sour grapes

There was such a plethora of questions about England's Wayne Rooney at the post-match news conference last night that one exasperated colleague shouted out:

"Can you please tell me, is Wayne Rooney really God?" Given the match that was in it, not to say the tournament so far for the young Everton striker, such media obsession is only understandable. According to England manager Sven Eriksson, Rooney "deserves every headline at the moment".

Curiously enough, defeated Croatia coach Otto Baric was rather less impressed, telling the baffled reporters that he could think of at least 10 defenders in Europe who could stop him and adding: "Rooney is not a phenomenon, he's just a good player." Did we detect sour grapes in the air? Perhaps not because in the end, Baric acknowledged what had been evident to the 62,000 capacity crowd at the Estadio de Luz, namely that England were much the better team: "We had problems, one of our players, Robert Kovac, injured himself during the warm-up and he was not at his best.In the second half we were too exposed and they picked us off, but in the end, we deserved to lose, England deserved to win, they were the better team."

It was a much satisfied Eriksson who came out to meet the press, praising his side's mental strength in recovering from the bad start and the early goal conceded to Croatia and then getting into the game. He did admit that when Niko Kovac opened the scoring for Croatia in the sixth minute, he was thinking some "very bad language".

The England manager, not for the first time in this tournament, had to field a series of questions about his boy wonder. Eriksson admitted to being short of new words on the matter, saying: "I don't know what to say about him anymore. He's absolutely fantastic. He just doesn't score goals, he also plays football. He's a complete footballer and congratulations to him, I'm very happy to have him in the team." How did he view a quarter-final clash with Portugal? "The major thing is to recover as quickly as possible. It will be difficult against Portugal, but I hope it will be difficult for them too. They have a good team, good technique, pace, movement, individual talents like Ronaldo, Deco, Figo, and then Nuno Gomes scored a good goal against Spain last night. But we should be proud of what we have done, with a little bit of luck we might have nine points in the bag at this stage."