At 16, he was hailed as the game's coming saviour. Nine years later, having been dropped for Manchester United's key clash against Real Madrid, is Wayne Rooney finished at the club and will he ever fulfil that dazzling promise?
No one is indispensable. If there is an abiding principle of Alex Ferguson's 26-year tenure at Manchester United it is that. Paul Ince, who attempted to bestow on himself the nickname "the Guv'nor", found that out; he was followed out the door by Roy Keane, David Beckham, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Now it's Wayne Rooney's turn, after Ferguson's decision to start the striker on the bench for the key clash against Real Madrid last Tuesday. Within hours, Rooney's fate appeared to be sealed: he would be jettisoned in the summer, for around £30m, to Paris Saint-Germain, the only pockets in Europe deep enough for his astronomical wages.
Once again, Ferguson had been ruthless: exclusion at first leading to inevitable ejection. He explained before the match that the issue was Rooney's lack of fitness. Ah, we thought, everyone knows Rooney's predilection for a crafty Marlboro Light. After the game, whispers suggested that the pair have not been on good terms for a couple of years, since Rooney criticised United's ambition and lobbied for a transfer to their neighbours, City.
Still, his omission on Tuesday caused a breath-quickening shock. "Can't believe @WayneRooney isn't starting," tweeted his wife, Coleen. It is not as if the player had been enduring a wretched run of form. The previous Saturday, he had been rambunctious in United's 4-0 thumping of Norwich City, creating goals and scoring himself from nearly 30 yards. Statistically – in terms of assists and goals – he is actually having his most effective season for the club he joined in 2004 aged 18.
After the Norwich match, the 27-year-old spoke of his ambition to reach 200 goals for Manchester United; his current tally is 196. "The age I'm at is the time when most players start to peak – from now and across the next four to five years," he said. "Hopefully that'll be the case and the team will benefit from that."
Off the pitch, Rooney has had a rare period out of the spotlight. For the longest time, he had been locked in perpetual adolescence. He was Man Utd's man-child: he crashed his cars, he scrapped in bars, he slept with prostitutes and he urinated against walls in public. Well, at least he wasn't vain. My mistake – I missed off his visit to a Harley Street hair clinic in June 2011 for a hair transplant.
On the field, he had earned a reputation for petulance, swearing into television cameras and picking up senseless red cards, such as the one that led him to miss the start of the Euro 2012 finals. Recently, however, he has been something close to a model citizen and he has not been sent off in the Premier League since 2009.
So what was Ferguson thinking? One scenario is that it was just a psychological trick to motivate one of his star performers. Rooney had become comfortable in mid-contract, picking up £250,000 each week, and needed a reminder that he had fallen short of the greatness once predicted for him. Chastened and with a point to prove, he may return to the United starting line-up as soon as this afternoon for the FA Cup quarter-final against Chelsea. Ferguson, meanwhile, sits back and accepts the plaudits as tactical genius.
On Friday, Ferguson was adamant there was no long-standing grudge with Rooney. "He will be here next year, you have my word on that," he said. "There is no issue between myself and Wayne Rooney. To suggest we don't talk is nonsense."
But whether Rooney plays today or not, there is a growing suspicion that Ferguson wants to make a point about one of his bugbears: player power. "When I started out in management 37 years ago, there were no agents – imagine that!" he said last year. "There was no freedom of contract either, so players were totally tied to their clubs. A change in that sense was inevitable, though I think now the scales have tipped completely in the other direction and I'm not sure it's good for the game."
To see player power at its most rampant, Ferguson need only look at Chelsea. Dissent from senior players has already contributed to the downfall of one manager – André Villas-Boas – and has been a recurring issue with Rafa Benitez, the interim boss. Goalkeeper Petr Cech said last week: "Everybody should have a chance to express an opinion. This is why when we see something is going wrong people have the right to say, 'We think this is wrong. We should improve that.'"
Ferguson, an inveterate crockery-smasher and boot-kicker in the dressing room, is unlikely to agree. He must have found it hard to forgive Rooney his treachery over the threatened move to the "noisy neighbours" Manchester City in 2010. Now the career of the most gifted English footballer of his generation hangs in the balance.
Rooney was asked recently if stating that he wanted to leave Manchester United was the biggest mistake of his life. "I'd say so," he replied. "I realised I'd made a mistake, it was silly of me to say what I said." Until that point in his career, he had basically kept his mouth shut and his reticence served him well. In the spirit of the hoary cliche, he let his feet do the talking.
Wayne Rooney was born on 24 October 1985, in Croxteth, an area of Liverpool with a reputation for gang violence. His father was a builder in and out of work and his mother was a dinner lady and they lived in a council house that became a drugs rehabilitation centre after they left. The Rooneys were Roman Catholic and a large extended family had crossed the Irish Sea at various points over the previous two centuries to settle in Liverpool.
Rooney was never very academic; he once recorded 0% in a Spanish exam, which might prove interesting if Real Madrid or Barcelona are interested in buying him. Fortunately, he was a natural footballer. He joined Everton, the team he supported, aged nine, and announced his arrival in the Premier League with a goal against Arsenal, five days before his 17th birthday. Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager, said that Rooney, who was still on £80 a week at this stage, was the best young talent he had seen in England.
He made his England debut in 2003, aged 17 years and 111 days, and shortly afterwards he proposed to Coleen McLoughlin, whom he knew from Croxteth and summer holidays at Butlins, on the forecourt of a petrol station. When she accepted, they went home to her mum's and had sausages, corned beef hash and beans.
But Rooney was already outgrowing Croxteth, and in the summer of 2004 he moved to Manchester United for £25.6m. He was called all sorts of names for this perfidy, so he sent a text message to Sky Sports to explain himself: "I left because the club was doing my head in – Wayne Rooney." (His relationship with the Everton manager, David Moyes, had grown tense. Relations with his former club are now very warm and he makes a point of dressing his son Kai in an Everton strip.) On his debut for United, he scored a hat-trick against Fenerbahce in the Champions League.
Rooney seemed to be the answer to the prayers of a football-mad nation. He could play up front, in "the hole", on the wings, on his own, in a partnership; he genuinely didn't appear to care. He had the face of a child – or a potato, or Shrek, if you were unkind – but you never worried for a second that this boy would be bullied by the men. He had the adroitness of George Best or Gazza, only without their tormented inner lives. Anything was possible.
That is why his relegation to a walk-on part on Tuesday remains significant. Football players who become famous in their teens often remain precociously young in our consciousness. But Rooney will be 28 in October. He is not a Lionel Messi or a Ronaldo and he never will be. When pundits talk of building an England team around one player, it is Arsenal's Jack Wilshere whose name now comes up.
It is premature to write Rooney off, but he has indisputably been relegated from the hole to a hole. From the start of next season, Uefa is implementing its financial fair play system, which requires professional clubs in Europe to keep a check on their spending and ultimately will make them break even each season. Manchester City have already ruled out an approach for Rooney, while there hasn't been a flicker from Chelsea or the Spanish giants.
Besides, there is the precedent that players rarely prosper after they have been offloaded by Ferguson. Just ask the self-styled Guv'nor, who finished his career at Swindon and Macclesfield.
Unquestionably, the best option for Rooney is to stay where he is and follow the example of Ryan Giggs, who played his 1,000th match for Manchester United on Tuesday. Ferguson, as usual, has his man exactly where he wants him. Reported by guardian.co.uk 51 minutes ago.
No one is indispensable. If there is an abiding principle of Alex Ferguson's 26-year tenure at Manchester United it is that. Paul Ince, who attempted to bestow on himself the nickname "the Guv'nor", found that out; he was followed out the door by Roy Keane, David Beckham, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Now it's Wayne Rooney's turn, after Ferguson's decision to start the striker on the bench for the key clash against Real Madrid last Tuesday. Within hours, Rooney's fate appeared to be sealed: he would be jettisoned in the summer, for around £30m, to Paris Saint-Germain, the only pockets in Europe deep enough for his astronomical wages.
Once again, Ferguson had been ruthless: exclusion at first leading to inevitable ejection. He explained before the match that the issue was Rooney's lack of fitness. Ah, we thought, everyone knows Rooney's predilection for a crafty Marlboro Light. After the game, whispers suggested that the pair have not been on good terms for a couple of years, since Rooney criticised United's ambition and lobbied for a transfer to their neighbours, City.
Still, his omission on Tuesday caused a breath-quickening shock. "Can't believe @WayneRooney isn't starting," tweeted his wife, Coleen. It is not as if the player had been enduring a wretched run of form. The previous Saturday, he had been rambunctious in United's 4-0 thumping of Norwich City, creating goals and scoring himself from nearly 30 yards. Statistically – in terms of assists and goals – he is actually having his most effective season for the club he joined in 2004 aged 18.
After the Norwich match, the 27-year-old spoke of his ambition to reach 200 goals for Manchester United; his current tally is 196. "The age I'm at is the time when most players start to peak – from now and across the next four to five years," he said. "Hopefully that'll be the case and the team will benefit from that."
Off the pitch, Rooney has had a rare period out of the spotlight. For the longest time, he had been locked in perpetual adolescence. He was Man Utd's man-child: he crashed his cars, he scrapped in bars, he slept with prostitutes and he urinated against walls in public. Well, at least he wasn't vain. My mistake – I missed off his visit to a Harley Street hair clinic in June 2011 for a hair transplant.
On the field, he had earned a reputation for petulance, swearing into television cameras and picking up senseless red cards, such as the one that led him to miss the start of the Euro 2012 finals. Recently, however, he has been something close to a model citizen and he has not been sent off in the Premier League since 2009.
So what was Ferguson thinking? One scenario is that it was just a psychological trick to motivate one of his star performers. Rooney had become comfortable in mid-contract, picking up £250,000 each week, and needed a reminder that he had fallen short of the greatness once predicted for him. Chastened and with a point to prove, he may return to the United starting line-up as soon as this afternoon for the FA Cup quarter-final against Chelsea. Ferguson, meanwhile, sits back and accepts the plaudits as tactical genius.
On Friday, Ferguson was adamant there was no long-standing grudge with Rooney. "He will be here next year, you have my word on that," he said. "There is no issue between myself and Wayne Rooney. To suggest we don't talk is nonsense."
But whether Rooney plays today or not, there is a growing suspicion that Ferguson wants to make a point about one of his bugbears: player power. "When I started out in management 37 years ago, there were no agents – imagine that!" he said last year. "There was no freedom of contract either, so players were totally tied to their clubs. A change in that sense was inevitable, though I think now the scales have tipped completely in the other direction and I'm not sure it's good for the game."
To see player power at its most rampant, Ferguson need only look at Chelsea. Dissent from senior players has already contributed to the downfall of one manager – André Villas-Boas – and has been a recurring issue with Rafa Benitez, the interim boss. Goalkeeper Petr Cech said last week: "Everybody should have a chance to express an opinion. This is why when we see something is going wrong people have the right to say, 'We think this is wrong. We should improve that.'"
Ferguson, an inveterate crockery-smasher and boot-kicker in the dressing room, is unlikely to agree. He must have found it hard to forgive Rooney his treachery over the threatened move to the "noisy neighbours" Manchester City in 2010. Now the career of the most gifted English footballer of his generation hangs in the balance.
Rooney was asked recently if stating that he wanted to leave Manchester United was the biggest mistake of his life. "I'd say so," he replied. "I realised I'd made a mistake, it was silly of me to say what I said." Until that point in his career, he had basically kept his mouth shut and his reticence served him well. In the spirit of the hoary cliche, he let his feet do the talking.
Wayne Rooney was born on 24 October 1985, in Croxteth, an area of Liverpool with a reputation for gang violence. His father was a builder in and out of work and his mother was a dinner lady and they lived in a council house that became a drugs rehabilitation centre after they left. The Rooneys were Roman Catholic and a large extended family had crossed the Irish Sea at various points over the previous two centuries to settle in Liverpool.
Rooney was never very academic; he once recorded 0% in a Spanish exam, which might prove interesting if Real Madrid or Barcelona are interested in buying him. Fortunately, he was a natural footballer. He joined Everton, the team he supported, aged nine, and announced his arrival in the Premier League with a goal against Arsenal, five days before his 17th birthday. Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager, said that Rooney, who was still on £80 a week at this stage, was the best young talent he had seen in England.
He made his England debut in 2003, aged 17 years and 111 days, and shortly afterwards he proposed to Coleen McLoughlin, whom he knew from Croxteth and summer holidays at Butlins, on the forecourt of a petrol station. When she accepted, they went home to her mum's and had sausages, corned beef hash and beans.
But Rooney was already outgrowing Croxteth, and in the summer of 2004 he moved to Manchester United for £25.6m. He was called all sorts of names for this perfidy, so he sent a text message to Sky Sports to explain himself: "I left because the club was doing my head in – Wayne Rooney." (His relationship with the Everton manager, David Moyes, had grown tense. Relations with his former club are now very warm and he makes a point of dressing his son Kai in an Everton strip.) On his debut for United, he scored a hat-trick against Fenerbahce in the Champions League.
Rooney seemed to be the answer to the prayers of a football-mad nation. He could play up front, in "the hole", on the wings, on his own, in a partnership; he genuinely didn't appear to care. He had the face of a child – or a potato, or Shrek, if you were unkind – but you never worried for a second that this boy would be bullied by the men. He had the adroitness of George Best or Gazza, only without their tormented inner lives. Anything was possible.
That is why his relegation to a walk-on part on Tuesday remains significant. Football players who become famous in their teens often remain precociously young in our consciousness. But Rooney will be 28 in October. He is not a Lionel Messi or a Ronaldo and he never will be. When pundits talk of building an England team around one player, it is Arsenal's Jack Wilshere whose name now comes up.
It is premature to write Rooney off, but he has indisputably been relegated from the hole to a hole. From the start of next season, Uefa is implementing its financial fair play system, which requires professional clubs in Europe to keep a check on their spending and ultimately will make them break even each season. Manchester City have already ruled out an approach for Rooney, while there hasn't been a flicker from Chelsea or the Spanish giants.
Besides, there is the precedent that players rarely prosper after they have been offloaded by Ferguson. Just ask the self-styled Guv'nor, who finished his career at Swindon and Macclesfield.
Unquestionably, the best option for Rooney is to stay where he is and follow the example of Ryan Giggs, who played his 1,000th match for Manchester United on Tuesday. Ferguson, as usual, has his man exactly where he wants him. Reported by guardian.co.uk 51 minutes ago.