Wayne Rooney - Take the Time
Wayne Rooney has been disrespected for far too long. Give him his flowers.
I’ve been struggling to come up with a piece to write this week. Since I really got into writing during the World Cup, I’ve preferred getting at least one new article out per week. With writing, sometimes the ideas present themselves to you, and sometimes you have to go out searching for those ideas. I had basically resigned myself to not getting one out this week and breaking my streak.
That was until I saw a conversation (started by an account I’m not going to draw attention to as I’ve since found out the person running it holds some horrible transphobic views - Fuck TERFs) about a Manchester United legend.
In this conversation several people posited that Wayne Rooney, the highest scoring Manchester United and England player of all-time, was not a World Class player.
Searching around online, I saw that this was a regular talking point, and not just the random musings of a couple of dim fanboys.
Solid is what they called him. Great on his day.
Give over.
On June 21st 1993, Whitney Houston released "Run to You". The song was nominated for the 1993 Academy Award for Best Original Song. It details the story of a woman who wishes that the person she loves would take the time to take a deeper look inside of who she is as a person. She does not wholly amount to what you see on the outside.
‘I know that when you look at me
There's so much that you just don't see
But if you would only take the time’
Just over nine years later, on the 19th of October 2002, sixteen-year-old Wayne Rooney was introduced to the world. He stepped onto the pitch at Goodison Park for his boyhood club, and with the grace and confidence of a man two time his age, slammed home a simply stunning goal against then Premier League champions Arsenal - a strike that ended their 30-game unbeaten run and gave the Blues all three points. ‘Remember the Name’ is what we were told.
I cannot emphasise enough how impressive this goal is. It seems lost on many. This boy, this literal child, receives an iffy ball over the top from Thomas Gravesen. He takes it down with the deftest of touches, pulls the ball back into space, looks up, sees the goalkeeper is a bit off his line and says “I’ll have that.”. It’s not just the goal itself, it’s the context surrounding the goal which makes it outstanding. After the game Wayne goes home and has a kickabout around the sheds with his mates. A kickabout. After scoring against the league champions.
16 goals and 68 appearances later, Rooney made the move up the M62 to Old Trafford for £27 million, making him the most expensive teenager in the world at the time.
He’s just 18. His first game is in the group stages of the Champions League. Major occasion. Is he scared? God no. He goes out and scores a hat-trick. On his debut.
In between his move to Manchester United from Everton, what does he do?
Oh not much, just goes to Euro 2004 with England, starts every game, scores 4 goals in 4 games.
Easy.
18 years old.
I could go through every single magical moment that Rooney created across his Manchester United career but it’d take far too long.
I chose to draw attention to his younger years because I feel like they’re not appreciated enough. What he did is ridiculous. Those moments? Leading England at a major tournament? ALL before the age of 19. Stupid. What are you on about. Impossible.
If you want to reminisce like I have, here’s all of his goals for United. From the angry blast post-referee argument vs Newcastle to the iconic overhead vs Man City.
The legend would spend 13 seasons at United and win all the major honours at the club, helping United to reach the pinnacle of European football once again under the reign of Ferguson, who did so for the second time in his career.
Rooney made a total of 559 appearances for United, scoring 253 goals and 146 assists. This meant that he offered a goal every 2.21 matches and a goal contribution every 1.40 matches. Rooney had a hand in 399 goals for United, which is a great figure for a player that really played in quite a few roles at the club.
He played the main striking position. Also as a second striker, attacking midfielder, a winger. He even played as a defensive midfield at the end of his career. Rooney offered everything he had for his entire career, which led to the star beginning to burn out at an age where others - who had no experience of the toll the amount of minutes Rooney had played from such a young age could have on their bodies - would have been in the prime of their lives.
After he was allowed to move on from United for free in 2017, he briefly returned home, back down the M62, before moving across the pond to the MLS. In the last years of his career he would play for DC United (Where he is now the head coach) and return back to England for a spell as both player and manager of Derby County, endearing himself to the fans and the city of Derby in the process.
Wayne Rooney was my favourite player growing up. I wanted to be like him. When I kicked the ball around my grandparents’ back garden, I imagined linking up with him. He was like me. Broad shouldered, a bit angry, loved a mouth off to the referee, always fighting off gaining weight as everything in his genes compelled him to. I modelled everything about my game after him. The only jersey I ever got a name on the back of had “Rooney, 10” on it.
For many people of a similar age to me, Wayne Rooney is one of the key reasons they fell in love with United. One of the key reasons they fell in love with Football. When Ronaldo left the club for Real Madrid in 2009, Rooney became the poster boy for United, leading many to idolise him and view him at that time as one of the best in the world. In those years after Ronaldo left, Rooney took over as chief goalscorer, and quite often got mentioned in the same breath as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
It is not Wayne Rooney’s status as a legend that is up for debate. That is unquestionable. What others seek to debate is the position in which he sits in the pantheon of legends in which he, compared to the others, may engender less respect.
For a player who is currently United and England’s top goal scorer, lifted every trophy possible for United, and stayed with the club during one of its most turbulent periods in the post-Ferguson era as club captain, it is safe to say he quite often does not receive the respect a player who has achieved so much for one club usually generates, not just from United fans, but Football fans as a collective.
I understand why.
At the beginning of his career, Rooney was a media darling. The next big thing. The kid that would finally lead England to greatness. After his red card (which I’ve always thought was a harsh decision) in the Quarter Final of the 2006 World Cup, all of that changed. Like Beckham in 1998, he became a pariah. This was at the absolute peak of British media toxicity. They converged on him for the rest of his career like the vultures they are, craving whatever peck they could get at him.
Rooney made mistakes, yes, but each of those sat under the most minute of microscope focuses. Most of them were in his personal life, an area we as fans had no right to pay attention to. He rarely made a mistake on the pitch.
He was constantly painted as a traitor. Whether it was over his move to Manchester United from Everton, or him threatening a transfer request away from United in 2010 (rarely is it mentioned here that he threatened this over a perceived lack of ambition by the club to want to win trophies, which he was correct to draw attention to at the time).
So no wonder have a bad view of him. The media have told us their view of him for nearly two decades now and so many have just swallowed that up as fact.
Well, as Rafa Benítez said, “I want to talk about facts”.
Facts are, Wayne Rooney shouldn’t have made it as far as he did. He burst onto the scene at 16 with nobody protecting him from the mania that would follow him for the rest of his playing career.
“There was a period in my career, for a long period of my career, I was suffering inside. I was finding ways to deal with that. A lot of it ended up in drinking.”, he said in an interview leading up to the release of his self-titled 2022 documentary on Amazon Prime.
Rooney said the issues were a mixture of everything and built up to the point where he saw a psychologist for a short period of time.
Asked if there was better support available he could have had an even better career, he said:
“Yeah, possibly. You never know. You always look in hindsight. Actually when I was dealing with them issues, it was when I was more raw on the pitch, I was more angry on the pitch. Actually when I learned to deal with them, that went away because you’re obviously putting yourself in a better frame of mind as well. So, I don’t know. I don’t know whether it would have seen me become a better player, play for longer, whatever that situation is. But it was part of my life, a part of my career. Obviously I’m happy with my career but then there’s moments where I struggled quite badly, actually.”
There was always much more to Wayne Rooney than what you could see on the surface. He was always a different man than the media portrayed him to be. You can see that now that he’s retired and the spotlight has fallen off of him.
Maybe there’s a bigger reason behind why he was so devastated at the world’s loss of the iconic Whitney Houston, another star that we didn’t appreciate enough until it wasn’t possible.
Give people their flowers. Take the time. Especially for a man that’s dedicated so much of himself for such a huge portion of his life for our joy and entertainment.