Wayne Rooney is in good form given that he’s trussed up in what looks like a wet suit with plates stuck to it. He’s in Badalona, a forgettable industrial suburb adjacent to Barcelona, to shoot an advert for FIFA 07, the latest instalment of EA Sports’ hugely popular computer game series.

Brazilians Ronaldinho and Juninho also feature, along with Valencia hotshot David Villa, but they’re long gone by the time the private jet carrying Rooney from Manchester touches down for a four-hour stay in Catalonia.

The 20-year-old soon takes centre stage before banks of lights and cameras in a vast photographic studio, where he performs football movements to be replicated in the game. Looking more assured and at ease with such requests than a year ago, Rooney plays to the camera with a Cantona-like swagger. Without being instructed, he then shadow boxes, karate kicks and even does a pirouette that leaves the crew amused and impressed. They’ve all worked with big-time footballers who make Mariah Carey look modest, so they appreciate Rooney enjoying himself as if he was messing about with his mates on the pavements of Liverpool.

FourFourTwo is the only media present and we’re here to interrogate the man who holds the hopes of an expectant nation on his broad shoulders.

The hype around your injury before the World Cup was unbelievable. Do you think it affected the rest of the squad?

I think all the stuff in the papers went on a bit too much. I asked for people to leave me alone and let me try and get fit, but the press went on about it every day, which was frustrating. I didn’t want the players thinking we were a one-man team like the papers suggested, because we weren’t. We had many players we couldn’t afford to lose – Becks, Owen, Stevie, Lampard and others. Without me they could still win. But every day, different doctors were coming out on TV offering their so-called expert opinions on my injury, even though they hadn’t even seen my foot. One said that I had three breaks in my foot when I didn’t. And most of them didn’t know what stage of recovery I was at, but they spoke as if they did. It was frustrating, but I just had to get on with things.

What was the most ridiculous story?

Papers exaggerating the oxygen tent and stuff like that were probably the worst. They said I’d be sleeping in the tent at home when it was actually at the training ground. It was huge and I had to go in there for 100 minutes, twice a day, with a five-hour break between the sessions. I did the first session at 7am and, after training, waited around to do the next one. I hated it because it made me feel sick. The doctor told me that it would get better, but after eight sessions it was just as bad. I hated being stuck inside it for so long too, just lying there as if I was dead. After four days it made me feel so weak that I wasn’t up for training, so I didn’t go in it again.

Was there any stage when you thought you’d miss the World Cup?

I’d be lying if I said I always thought I’d make the World Cup. When I first did the injury I doubted whether I would be going because my foot needed to heal and even then I’d need to regain my fitness. The boss [Sir Alex Ferguson] gave me a talk about not setting my heart on playing in the World Cup. That way, if I wasn’t ready in time, I wouldn’t be so disappointed. But if I did make it, which he hoped, it would be a huge bonus.

I just stayed focused and determined and tried to blank everything out in order to prepare for making it. I was probably a nightmare for [girlfriend] Coleen to live with.

When you finally got there, how did it feel to actually be playing in a World Cup? Did it live up to your expectations?

What I didn’t expect was to see so many England fans in Germany. For each game, we had to spend the night before in a city-centre hotel, organised by FIFA, not our own FA. This was to make sure we arrived at the stadiums on time. Sometimes these hotels can be really noisy and horrible but the ones in Germany were all fine.

In the hotel they gave us in Nuremberg, before the Trinidad and Tobago match, there was a big massage room on the ground floor and I was sitting there being massaged, soon after we arrived, when I looked through one of the windows and realised I could see straight out onto the street and there were a dozen or so England fans outside, walking up and down singing and shouting. I shouted to one of the lads, ‘Come and have a look at this,’ and they joined me. One of the fans then saw me and started chanting my name. Then all the others joined in and more and more of them appeared, all singing my name and the names of other England players. In the end there must have been about 3,000 England fans shouting and singing England songs outside the hotel. We waved and sang some of the songs back to them.

That was probably my highlight from Germany. A few of the players said they’d have liked to be out there with the fans, singing, having a few beers and walking about with their mates. I would definitely have enjoyed it. Our fans were brilliant throughout. Their support was positive and genuine and they did help lift us, unlike some of the football reporters...

As for playing, it was nice to play in the World Cup, but we went there to win and came back very disappointed. Although we took part, we came back with nothing.