Cole looks to Rooney for inspiration
Ashley Cole has admitted England are on a mission to bury the memory of their recent debacle in Denmark by winning the World Cup next summer.
And the Arsenal defender believes Wayne Rooney can inspire Sven-Goran Eriksson’s side to glory in Germany if he can repeat his form of Euro 2004.
England took the first steps towards regaining their pride with a 1-0 win over Wales in Cardiff on Saturday and now victory over Northern Ireland in Belfast on Wednesday would edge them closer to automatic qualification.
Cole said: “We have a good unit here and all the lads get on well but the Denmark game hurt and it was hard afterwards to compound what exactly happened.
“But it brought all the lads together and we want to prove to people and ourselves that we can go all the way in the World Cup if we qualify. We started that process on Saturday.
“We’ve got our destiny in our own hands. If we keep defending well, we know we can always create and score goals.
“In a World Cup year it is also about peaking at the right time and if we get through, we should do really well. There are a lot of players who are young but experienced as well – and everyone knows about Wayne Rooney.
“Hopefully he is going to go to another tournament and set it alight like he did in Euro 2004. He definitely could be the difference.”
Cole is confident England can overcome the threat of Ireland, who will be buoyed by their 2-0 win over Azerbaijan – their first in competitive football for four years.
He said: “It will be tough. They are going to be high on confidence. They won on Saturday. Everyone wants to beat England and that makes it 100 times harder for us.
“You look back and teams like Macedonia made it hard for us. Northern Ireland will be even harder but we feel we’ve got the players to get the result we need.”
