Wayne Rooney reveals the hilarious reason he ‘snapped’ at Gary Neville during England training in 2016

Wayne Rooney has admitted he once snapped at Gary Neville when his former Manchester United team-mate was assistant manager of England in 2016.

England were in camp for Euro 2016 in France and implemented an amusing system to label the worst player in training on any given day.

Writing in his column for The Times, Rooney said: ‘training in 2016 was good. Although I did snap at Neville. 

‘Borrowing an idea from rugby, we had a stuffed lion that was presented to the worst player in practice, and that player had to carry the lion out — the photographers would get the picture and the public would know who it was.

‘A great bit of fun, which sharpened competitiveness, but one day Neville got everyone to vote for me. 

‘A stitch up! I went at him. I had been bad in the ‘boxes’ (our version of the rondo) but the worst overall? No way.’

Rooney also attempted tp justify the Three Lions’ shock exit at the hands of Iceland.  

‘Iceland? What everyone forgets is that they’d had a great qualifying campaign, did well in the group stage, and came into their round-of-16 match against us in Nice with a lot of momentum. 

‘Back home, they were being featured on the BBC. They didn’t just hop off a fishing boat and stick their boots on.