SWANSEA, Wales
About half an hour before kickoff at Liberty Stadium, Wayne Rooney waited just outside the penalty area. Every few seconds, one of his teammates would begin a rehearsal of an attacking movement — by kicking the ball to a player on the wing, for example, or pinging a sharp pass into the middle — and Rooney would turn and glide toward the goal, where he was supposed to finish the sequence as he would hope to during the game: by scoring.
Except he did not. In a stretch of four consecutive moves on Sunday, Rooney first turned the ball wide, then hit a glancing header, then had his curling shot saved and then watched as the player on the wing picked out a teammate beyond him with a cross.