Often referred to as one of England’s only true worlds class players, Wayne Rooney is a footballer that regularly divides opinion in pubs, on the terraces, on radio phone-ins and everywhere else that you find people talking about football. But is Rooney truly world class?

Much will depend on the definition of world class. Does it simply mean that a player is good enough to play on the world stage? Or that a player would find his way into a world XI should such a thing exist? The latter seems to make more sense, but would leave only 11 players worthy at any one time, which given the amount of times the phrase can be heard doesn’t seem to fit the bill. As you can see, the definition is the key. It’s fairly ambiguous, but here at Football Banter, the term world class means a player is among the top 4 or 5 in the world in that particular position. This allows for a decent number of players to be referred to as world class but still retains it as a pretty elite club to become a member of.

So, now we’ve settled that one (errrr) lets get back to the question – is Wayne Rooney world class? To say he is would mean he’s among the 5 best strikers in the world which Rooney at this moment in time isn’t. There are a number of players that would make the grade before him, the likes of Robin Van Persie, Lionel Messi, Sergio Aguero, David Villa, Neymar and Carlos Tevez. On his day Rooney would be up there, unfortunately for England however, his day doesn’t come often enough when representing his country.