MORE than once in his goal-laden career, Alan Shearer has said: "If I score, I score. If I don't, I don't. It doesn't bother me.''

Bland platitudes come as easily to Shearer as do goals.

But despite what he may say, scoring goals does, always has and always will bother him as long as he is lacing up his shooting boots.

From the day he scored five in his final trial match with Southampton to the moment he netted his 30th for England from the penalty spot against Romania, goals are what Shearer - in a football context - has lived for.

Give him the ball and, as sure as England fail at major championships, Shearer will score.

England's problem during their ill-starred Euro 2000 campaign was that, all too often, they couldn't even get the ball.

The embarrassing ease with which group qualifiers Portugal and Romania demonstrated their intrinsic skills to the detriment of a bewildered England, exposed the glaring technical deficiencies in our own game.

If anyone questioned the wisdom of Shearer quitting the international scene once England's involvement was over, events in Charleroi on Tuesday night will have removed all doubts that he is making the right decision.

It is to Shearer's eternal credit that he has battled back from career-threatening injuries to continue performing at the highest level.

Those injuries have, without doubt, taken an edge off his game and cost him a yard or two of pace.

But the fact is Shearer is now more likely to add to his hugely-impressive portfolio of goals with his beloved Newcastle United than he is with England.

At Newcastle, he enjoys better service and it is here, for the foreseeable future, that the focus of his attention will fall.

If he has sleepless nights in the next few weeks, thinking of what might have been this summer, it will prepare him for those later this year when he becomes a father for the third time.

The need to spend more time with his growing family was a key consideration when he shocked the football world by announcing he was to retire from international football after the European Championship finals.

The idea, of course, was that he would bow out in a blaze of glory.

Instead, Kevin Keegan's men blundered their way out of the tournament and England's latest number nine, his head hung in disbelief at the end of an error-ridden 3-2 defeat by Romania, was consigned to history.

The timing of Shearer's announcement in February was surprising but it was also right for both a proud and patriotic man whose efforts while wearing The Three Lions have never truly been appreciated.

Despite his critics, there is no question that Shearer, 30 in August, is still one of the top strikers in the country.

After all, when he scored his 30th goal of last season for Newcastle, he simultaneously brought up the magical figure of 300 throughout his senior career.

Shearer stands alongside Nat Lofthouse and Tom Finney at joint fourth on the list of England's all-time top scorers with 30 goals.

Keegan, the man who bought Shearer for a then-world record £15m while in charge at Newcastle, made it plain on becoming England boss that the Geordie talisman would be his attacking axis.

Having failed to score in seven internationals going into Euro 2000, many felt Keegan's loyalty was misplaced.

But it was Shearer who ended 34 years of hurt with the goal which sank Germany last Saturday.

Now the pretenders to Shearer's throne - the likes of Emile Heskey, Robbie Fowler and Sunderland's Kevin Phillips - are queueing up.

As for Shearer, it seems certain he will be offered the Newcastle manager's job when Bobby Robson finally decides to take his pension.

The England job is another obvious ambition for the son of a sheet metal worker from Tyneside, who rose to be football's archetypal working-class hero.

What odds Shearer being in Keegan's shoes for England's World Cup crusade in 2006?