Fearless Rooney deserves support if he follows fellow England stars into the dugout
WAYNE ROONEY is letting it be known that, when he finishes playing in America, he wants to become a manager back home.
The DC United striker – who is studying for his coaching badges in Washington – says he can’t imagine doing anything else and feels it’s a shame when players with stellar careers walk away from the sharp end of the game.
Seeing Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard take tough managerial tests in their stride has made him believe he has a chance, leading him to say: “It’s time for young English managers to step forward.”
Which is a welcome twist on a national obsession.
That sentence is often spoken in despairing tones by former players in TV studios after the latest Premier League managerial vacancy is filled by a foreigner.
But Rooney is coming at it from a different angle.
He’s not whining about foreign coaches “stealing jobs”, but, like Gerrard and Lampard, plotting a way to earn one on merit.
And they deserve all the encouragement English football can give them for risking reputational (and possibly health) failure, when they’re so rich they don’t need to work again.
The interesting thing about those three Champions League winners, who each have 100plus caps for England, is that their level of superstar rarely tries to make it in coaching. And those who do, mostly fail.
None of the other England centurions who had a brief stab at the job made a success of it – and David Beckham went straight past the dugout to the catwalk. For every Bryan Robson, who has a good go, there’s a John Barnes who tries, but fails or a Gary Lineker who admits he’d rather talk tactics on the telly.
Five years ago, when Claudio Ranieri got the Leicester job, Lineker tweeted about “the same old names getting a go on the managerial merry-go-round”.
He later admitted he was wrong about title-winning Ranieri. But was he also wrong not to admit the same old names were getting those jobs partly because so many younger ones were happy to be sitting on a couch opposite him?
Gerrard and Lampard will, no doubt, still be doing punditry, but they’re taking on a bigger, infinitely harder, challenge in trying to become a top boss.
After testing the water, coaching Under-18s at their old clubs, they have quickly taken on daunting tasks, which some view as hidings to nothing. Were Lampard to lead Derby up from the Championship, it would be some achievement, considering they’ve been outside the top flight for a decade.
That’s his stated ambition and, currently, he’s two points off automatic promotion.
Gerrard has taken on an enormously difficult first job, with a brief to close a gap on Celtic that has been steadily growing in recent years.
If he succeeds, it will be a priceless apprenticeship for his ambition of managing Liverpool. He, too, is two points off his target.
Many of us are as surprised to see Gerrard and Lampard in dugouts as we are to hear that Rooney wants to join them. But maybe we shouldn’t be. Maybe the modern game’s top players have had so much pressure and criticism that they have no fear of failure.
It would be great for English football if they succeeded, not least because it would encourage other elite players to take their expertise on to the training ground rather than the telly.
But maybe we should temper our optimism and withhold our praise until a new wave of English managers wins something.
Because we know what happened the last time we reckoned we had a Golden Generation coming through.
It would be great for our game if they succeeded