Man United's Wayne Rooney admits he faces a 'huge challenge' to keep his England place

Wayne Rooney admits he faces a 'huge challenge' to keep his place in the England team for Euro 2016

WAYNE ROONEY admits he is facing "a huge challenge" to keep his place in England's team for Euro 2016.

England face Spain tonight when Harry Kane will lead the attack, with manager Roy Hodgson having to change his plans after in-form Leicester striker Jamie Vardy was ruled out with a knee injury.

Rooney, who has scored 22 of his 50 England goals under Hodgson, has not been a substitute for his country since the World Cup dead-rubber with Costa Rica and said: "It's a huge challenge to keep your place in the team and that's what I want to do - I want to prove myself.

"It's the best group of strikers certainly since I've been involved in the squad. You've got players like Danny Welbeck, Daniel Sturridge and Theo Walcott out injured and it's a huge array of talent and it's great for the country.

"In previous years we've gone into tournaments and haven't had that many match-winners in the squad. Now we've got quite a few match-winners which can benefit us as a team.

 

"There has always been competition. As a footballer you want to play, but then obviously you have to understand I have played a lot of games for England and players like Jamie Vardy have come in and done well.

"I feel, certainly since Roy has been in charge, my international form has been great, I have scored a lot of goals and I hope that will continue."

England will play on the counter-attack against the reigning European champions in the Jose Rico Perez Stadium in Alicante and Hodgson is hoping the friendly lends itself to more "cut and thrust" than has been evident during the qualifying campaign for next summer's tournament.

"Obviously we are going to find ourselves in a situation now where games should be more cut and thrust," he said. "It is going to be attack-defence, attack-defence rather than attack-versus-defence, which it has been.

"Counter-attacking football has not really been much of an option because the opponents have stayed so deep and had so many players in front of their goal. We think the type of players we have in the team are well suited to counter-attacking football and [Ross] Barkley of course is one of those."