Wayne Rooney on…

Wayne Rooney spoke exclusively to Sky Sports about England’s perfect qualifying campaign, their chances at Euro 2016 and his time as captain.

Roy Hodgson named a 26-man squad for England’s Euro 2016 preparation friendlies against Turkey and Australia at the end of this month, and Rooney is more hopeful than ever that this could be their year.

Here, he speaks with Sky Sports News HQ’s Nick Collins about England’s progress since the World Cup in 2014, as well as looking back at a successful European Qualifiers campaign and why there is plenty of optimism for the future…

On England’s 2-0 win in Switzerland after the World Cup…

It was a big game for us. We’d obviously lost Steven Gerrard after the World Cup, and it was a change for us. Roy made me captain, and we knew how important it was, coming off the World Cup. There was a lot of pressure going into the game on Roy himself, and to get the victory in the way we did, we played a different style of football than we played over the previous two years and it worked. It was more exciting to watch and more enjoyable to play in.

On England’s 10 out of 10 European Qualifiers record…

We mentioned it after the Switzerland game, we didn’t want to get carried away. We had a good strong [group] of young players and we felt it was achievable.

We knew it would be tough to do, but once that got close again, we felt that if we got 10 wins out of 10 it would stand us in good stead going into the tournament. It was something we aimed for and achieved. I know the players and manager were really happy, it showed a great consistency.

On becoming England captain…

I felt I was the natural successor to Steven as captain, and the manager did too. It’s something I was delighted to do, and I want to do it to be successful as well. It’s something I really …

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