Wayne Rooney
England and Manchester United legend hangs up his boots
Few players have announced their arrival in English football quite as explosively as a 16-year-old superstar did in 2002. “Remember the name,” trilled a delighted Clive Tyldsley. “Wayne Rooney!” The Everton boy-wonder had just opened his Premier League account with a stunning winner against league champions Arsenal, and was about to take the football world by storm.
His retirement, in contrast, could hardly have been more understated. On January 15, Rooney was confirmed as Derby County’s new manager after a period as player-caretaker-manager, thus ending his playing days. His final game, a 3-0 defeat to Middlesbrough that had left the side rooted to the bottom of the Championship, had come almost two months earlier.
“Normally this happens at the end of a season and as a player you’d have time to reflect,” he said during his first press conference as boss. “My future, I feel, is in management. I’ve had a great career; I’ve enjoyed every minute.
“Hopefully now I can start to write some history and make a successful managerial career.”
In his 19-year career, Rooney scored 313 goals for Everton, Manchester United, D.C. United and Derby, in the process becoming the Red Devils’ record scorer.
If one of those strikes were to sum him up as a player, the stunning 25-yard volley against Newcastle at Old Trafford in 2005 does the best job. The build-up features a furious Rooney arguing with the referee, a typically foul-mouthed tirade streaming from his mouth. He seems barely aware of the ball as it is hooked up field. Then, as it is headed into his path, he puts his foot through it as if it is the referee’s head.
It is a ten-second spell that perfectly encapsulates peak-Rooney: fierce temperament, bullish power, and impeccable technique. At his best he was a force of nature, always on the edge, capable of changing a match at any moment; either with a moment of genius or a loss of temper.
Often, that short temper would define his international career. His first World Cup was ended by a red card for a stamp on Portugal’s Ricardo Carvalho; his second marked by an on-pitch rant against England fans booing the team after a dreadful 0-0 draw with Algeria. He also missed the first two matches of Euro 2012 having been sent off in the final qualifying match.
Injuries played their part too. At his first, and best, major tournament, Euro 2004, he looked set to fire England to the final until an injury against Portugal in the quarter-finals. Two years later, a broken metatarsal meant he was short of his best in Germany, too.
Arguably the greatest talent of the so-called “Golden Generation”, Rooney’s greatest criticism was his failure to lead England to a trophy, or
“Hopefully now I can start to write some history and make a successful managerial career”
even a semi-final. The two best scoring seasons of his career (2009-10 and 2011-12, when he scored 34 goals in all competitions), both ended with major tournaments, yet he failed to deliver at either of them. For many, he failed to replicate his club form on the international stage when it most mattered, even if he did win 120 caps and break the all-time goal record.
Incidentally, that is not a record that he expects to last: “Harry Kane will break it in a couple of years,” he told Amazon Prime last year. “I want him to break it, I think it’ll be great. I’m looking forward to presenting him with the trophy for doing it, just like Bobby Charlton did for me.”
The suggestion that Rooney could have achieved more is given further mileage by comparisons to his former team-mate, Cristiano Ronaldo.
Born just eight months apart, the pair - alongside Carlos Tevez - formed one of the most formidable attacks in Premier League history, winning three titles in a row and the 2008 Champions League, before losing to Barcelona in the final a year later. In the five years they played together, Rooney and Ronaldo scored 215 goals between them, each averaging around 0.4 per game. Yet the Portuguese forward’s career scaled even greater heights after he left for Real Madrid.
“Sometimes you get this feeling that people think Rooney never achieved what he should have, or he never did what Ronaldo did. But Ronaldo’s a freak!” said Jamie Carragher on Monday Night Football. “Wayne Rooney’s career is unbelievable,” the former Liverpool defender added. “The only thing he didn’t do was win something
for his country and become the best player in the world, but when he was at his peak he was there or thereabouts.”
Rooney was so good, so young, expectations for him were set at an impossibly high level. In another era, without the feats of Ronaldo or Lionel Messi to be compared to, perhaps he would have been more appreciated.
His managerial career has started well, if unspectacularly, with Derby slowly moving up the league. It is a far cry from the job that former teammate Frank Lampard took in 2018, when Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori and Harry Wilson arrived on loan.
In November, Mel Morris agreed to sell the club to Sheikh Khaled, a cousin of Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour, but at the time of writing, the takeover has not been completed. County players were paid late in December and placed under a brief transfer embargo as a result, while Rooney has deferred part of his wages.
There are also problems on the pitch - literally. Budget cutbacks and poor weather has left the Pride Park turf in an awful state, so slick, passing football is out of the question for now.
Unlike his playing career, where he was a world star from virtually his first kick, Rooney faces a tough journey to the top of the managerial world. But he seems ready for the fight.