Wayne Rooney — Devastating, Brilliant, and Imperfect
There is a line in Julian Barnes’s masterpiece The Noise of Time, a novel about the splendid Russian-Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, in which Barnes states that “everyone had always wanted more from him than he was able to give. All he had ever wanted to give them was music.” Change that last noun to soccer and I think the quote applies to how soccer, particularly English soccer, perceives the career of Wayne Rooney.
In many ways, Rooney was a victim of his early success and the unrealistic expectations that were placed on him when bursting onto the scene at 16 years of age. Rooney has reiterated time and time again that, for him, the most important bit of his soccer career was enjoying the game. The best English soccer player of his generation simply wanted to play, which he did brilliantly most of the time, but everyone kept wanting more from him.
When he retired last week to become the permanent manager of Derby County, initiating a new chapter in his wonderful story, he did so as Manchester United’s record goalscorer. That record looks unlikely to be beaten any time soon. Rooney also retired as England’s greatest ever goalscorer and, while that record might not remain unchallenged for as long, it really is one giant of a career the Liverpudlian has produced.
There is no need to write about Rooney’s accomplishments as a player. We all know the player he was, the goals he scored and the trophies he lifted. Since scoring that superb goal against Arsenal in October 2002, at 16 years of age, Rooney was in the public eye. He looked like a future superstar at Everton, broke into the England team and was integral already at the 2004 Euros in Portugal, became a global superstar after joining and improving under Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United and eventually ended his career as one of the most decorated English soccer players of his generation.
Rooney embodied everything soccer is supposed to be; passion, skill, hard work, individual genius, collective performance, inspiration and moments that take your breath away. He was a player for the ages, someone we will still be talking about in fifty years, and the kid from Croxteth became an idol revered across the globe.
Looking through his collection of goals, he scored all types. There are first time shots, headers, curlers, free-kicks, penalties, dinks, screamers and shots struck on the move, in step. He was unplayable at times, the type of striker who could keep an entire defensive line busy, thus creating space for his teammates too. Cristiano Ronaldo, who linked up brilliantly with Rooney, was the most obvious benefactor of this.
As mentioned, Rooney’s mentality was something else. He never hid, stepped up in big games and seemed to thrive when the pressure was on. He scored in title deciders, domestic and international cup finals, and came to life against the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Liverpool. The only time Rooney’s mentality was a problem was when he went back to Merseyside. Sir Alex Ferguson sometimes opted to leave Rooney out of games away at Everton and Liverpool since he felt Rooney would get too emotional when faced with a hostile reception at both grounds and that those emotions would hinder him from performing.
That’s the thing with Rooney; he remained human and flawed despite all of his brilliance. He was never a machine of consistency like Ronaldo or Messi. He could go weeks without scoring and then all of a sudden hit a hat trick. Just like the rest of us, he was fallible; he had bad spells, he made mistakes and then he did his best to rectify those. He never really grasped how to be at his most efficient in the way Ronaldo did early on and which turned him into the goal scoring machine he became.
Actually, Rooney wasn’t really interested in that. In a recent interview with the official Manchester United podcast, Rooney spoke of his two greatest goal scoring seasons (2009/10 and 2011/12) when he played as an out-and-out number nine and that those probably were the two seasons he enjoyed the least since he didn’t play the all-action role he wanted too.
Rooney had an unreal hunger, almost a desperation, to win, but what remained most important to him was enjoying his soccer. Therefore, Rooney’s soccer wasn’t solely about scoring loads of goals, although he did, of course, and winning individual honors; it was about enjoying the game he loved. That’s why he continued playing, first for D.C. United in the MLS and then Derby County in the Championship when he could have retired. To throw himself into the grueling Championship at the twilight of his career speaks of his insane love for the game. That, again, makes him human and relatable since he was largely a player who just did what he loved to do.
Take his borderline obsession with chipping the goalkeeper. After several stunning chips in the early years of his career, Rooney scored a wonderful chip, one of his most brilliant goals, against David James when United beat Portsmouth in 2007 and then tried to chip the goalkeeper of the opposition at least once in what felt like every game. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t on, because Rooney wanted to do it. So he tried. And tried. And then he scored from the halfway line away at West Ham in 2014. Sure, it wasn’t a chip, but it was sublime and a testament to Rooney’s willingness to do something special to bring enjoyment to the fans and, perhaps more importantly, to himself.
Even in his goal scoring, his most obvious legacy, his fallibility is evident. His collection of goals strays from the thunderous strikes flying past goalkeepers like high-speed trains trying to make up time between stations to the glorious representations of jaw-dropping technical quality like delicate dinks or curled efforts into the far corner and scrappy shots coming off his shins or simple mishits. That sums Rooney up.
He was never perfect technically, in the way Messi always has been, or physically, like his old teammate Ronaldo. That just heightens the identifiable nature of him. Even his greatest goal according to most, the stunning bicycle-kick against Manchester City, was imperfect due to the strike coming off his shin. Still, it was devastating and mind-bogglingly brilliant in the way soccer very rarely is. That goal was Rooney. Devastating, brilliant and imperfect.
In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald ends the book with the words “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” as his protagonist ponders if we can ever really escape our past. In regards to Rooney’s career, he never could. He was a victim of his swashbuckling past and, when he didn’t live up to that unrivaled promise he had once shown, he was considered to have waned and declined.
Even as Rooney continued to play every game for Manchester United and England in the latter stages of his career, he was criticized, sometimes even ridiculed, for not being as thrilling or as breathtaking as he once was. That, however, is the problem of spoiled viewers and not on Rooney. While he definitely waned quite early for a player of his quality, we can find legitimate reasons. Rooney’s physique was never going to be able to deal with the all-over-the-pitch style he had as a youngster. His injuries, particularly the metatarsal injury in 2006 and another foot injury sustained in 2010, hampered him physically, too.
Thus, it was never really surprising that he lost some of the energy and pace that made him such a wonderful player to watch in his youth. Additionally, the coaches he would later go on to have, such as Louis van Gaal and José Mourinho, wanted him to conserve his energy and stay in the positions where he could cause the most damage. That’s why, under the Dutchman, Rooney could go long spells of games without touching the ball when he played up front just because he followed the instructions of his coach. Stay in your position. Don’t roam. We know he must have hated that, but, in a way, that period highlighted the maturity in Rooney’s game.
Everyone had always wanted more from him than he was able to give them, but all Wayne Rooney ever wanted to do was play soccer. He did that better than most soccer players on the planet during his career, he is a record-breaking legend for club and country, he is a serial winner and was one of the most talented, captivating soccer players the Premier League has seen. While it will always be possible to wonder if he could have done more, as it is with most players, isn’t it more important to celebrate the greatness we’ve been blessed enough to witness?
Rooney at his best was a force of nature, a devastating forward who matched his talent with an insatiable hunger to work, compete and win. Added to that, his fallibility always remained. We can identify with his struggles, his moments of madness or his shortcomings and we can idolize his talent and achievements. That makes him relatable in a way Messi and Ronaldo never will be. They are perfect soccer players, but people aren’t perfect.
Clearly, Rooney wasn’t perfect. Ironically, that is why we probably, deep down, love him more. We always expect more from those we love, don’t we? And we are usually harder on those we love too, aren’t we?
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