News of Emile Heskey’s retirement from international football appears to be the cue for the nation’s newspapers to stick the boot in.

Leading the not-so-generous appraisal of Heskey’s contribution to the England cause is the Telegraph’s Jim White, who sees fit to undermine a player who never seemed anything but committed to succeeding for his country, despite his poor strike rate.

White also seems to overlook the fact that Heskey was possibly England’s man of the match in their 1-1 draw with USA at the World Cup. His intro is quite amusing though.

"Astonishingly, given the gravity of the news, the sun actually did rise this morning. Amazingly, the world continued to spin on its axis.

"Across the globe, people managed, despite what they had learned, somehow to get up, feed and dress themselves and head off to work much as they had before. Yet we know the world will never be the same again. Not now that Emile Heskey has announced his retirement from international football.

"There are those of a cynical persuasion who will feign surprise at this declaration. They will claim to have assumed, by the way he played, that he already had ordered his pipe and slippers and parked his feet on the fireside stool during the World Cup in South Africa.

"He certainly performed like a man failing to shake off the after-effects of his own leaving do. But how wrong they would be. His career, so he insists, had not ended before the defeat against Germany. It ended yesterday with a brief note posted on the news wires that he was no longer available for selection.

"So now we must brace ourselves for a Heskey-free future. No more will his name appear in an England squad list. And, as a result, never again will the rest of the world scratch its head in astonishment at how it was that the glitch in the Football Association's computer system – the one which continued mistakenly to insert his name in every squad list – had still not been fixed."

The Sun's Mark Irwin isn't much kinder either...

"England flop Emile Heskey jumped before he could be pushed last night by announcing his international retirement.

"The goal-shy Aston Villa striker was facing the axe after another World Cup failure in South Africa. But he has done the decent thing and saved Three Lions boss Fabio Capello the bother of making an awkward phonecall.

"Heskey, 32, managed a measly seven goals in 62 England games - or 3,413 minutes to be precise - and once went almost SIX YEARS without scoring for his country."