— Albert Einstein, The World As I See It (adapted)

ACTUALLY Einstein was describing theoretical physicists rather than strikers but the point remains the same. England footballers are not renowned for being good with words but that does not mean that David Beckham, Wayne Rooney et al should be passed off as dim. They just use their brains in different ways. Deep down, Rooney is as much of a clever clogs as Einstein.

According to Mike Parry, who hosts a morning show on talkSPORT, the mental processes that drive Rooney’s deeds are as astonishing as anything that wins Nobel prizes. In his new book, Rooney Tunes, out this week, Parry argues that Rooney’s brain can deal with equations as complicated as those with which the shaggy-haired German grappled when working on his explanation of the photoelectric effect.

It is a ludicrous cliché to say that someone like Rooney has “an educated right foot”. Unless that foot has been staying up late watching the Open University while the rest of Wayne dozes, it has the same lack of education as the rest of him. But he certainly has a gifted right foot, a clever one, a foot, even when broken, that is capable of brilliance.

And while Rooney’s school reports were bleak, Einstein’s ability to chip a football over a wall of leaping Brazilians was not so hot, either.

Until now, the closest that a Rooney has come to an Einstein was in being the names of characters in a Cary Grant film, Arsenic and Old Lace. Rooney’s theory of relativity is more to do with why he looks like his Mam than gravitation.

But here is Parry’s case: “Rooney has an ability to work out angles, speeds and velocities quickly. In a split-second, his brain has to assess a number of different calculations to take into account players in the way of a shot or a strong wind.”

Parry has enlisted the help of Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, to concoct three equations for the mental arithmetic Rooney performs when he runs into the box to volley a cross from Beckham. They are:

y = (v/u) x - (g/2u2)x2,

FD = CDpAv2 / 2 and

yn + akxy1 + by1 + cy = g.

Well, it’s quite obvious when you think about it. The first is to do with the height of the ball and its velocity, the second is the drag factor of the ball and the third the spin that Beckham will have put on the ball.

But the point is that Rooney doesn’t think about it. It comes to him naturally, in the same way that the infant Mozart saw a page full of black dots and turned them into sonatas before he was potty-trained.

“I just want to get into the team and show all of them what I can do,” was Rooney’s profound statement when he signed for Manchester United in 2004. But it is those very deeds that show his genius.

Perhaps Einstein summed it up best when he wrote that “imagination is more important than knowledge”. With luck, Rooney’s imagination will soon be shown off to the world.