In October 2002, when the mighty Arsenal arrived at Goodison Park, Everton’s home ground, on the back of a 30-game unbeaten streak, little did it know that it would be felled by a thunderous 30-yard drive by a cherubic 16-year-old.
Arsene Wenger, one of the best minds in football and an even better purveyor of great young talent, claimed afterwards that he hadn’t seen that good a player aged below 20 since he became manager at Arsenal. Wenger had arrived from France more than six years earlier.
As Wayne Rooney announced his retirement from international football last week, after having displaced Bobby Charlton as England’s record goal-scorer (53) and overtaken David Beckham as the country’s most-capped outfield player (119), not just Wenger but a legion of football fans would have been vindicated.
When Rooney lit up Euro 2004, scoring four goals in his first three matches, he was seen as destiny’s child. England’s only major title was – and still is – the 1966 World Cup and no one seemed better placed than him to unburden the country of this weight of history. A broken metatarsal ended those hopes in that tournament, but he was more than a dying ember.
That he never reached those dizzyingly high levels in another major competition – he played six of them – will forever be held against him. But underachievement in tournaments, as the great Lionel Messi would also attest, is often a problem of the collective and it cannot be helped that the talisman will always be blamed. To those outside England, Rooney’s cult was largely built in the colours of Manchester United for whom he played for 13 long years, won every trophy there was to be won, and ended as the highest goal-scorer. He was very much the product of the television era as the English Premier League, in its sanitised, post-hooliganism version, was beamed right across the world. For a generation which grew up in the 2000s supporting United, England was the default choice largely because of allegiance to one man.
Rooney may not figure in everybody’s list of the best footballers ever but in his prime he was an irrepressible blend of pace, power, awareness and potency in front of the goal. At a time when football is increasingly regimented and technical, nothing may ever have the same unshackling effect a lung-busting run by a player like Rooney might.
In the past two years, Rooney has been a diminished force. After failing to nail down a place under Jose Mourinho at United, the 31-year-old was dropped from the England squad in early 2017. Yet, such was the level of professionalism he displayed that Mourinho declared, “Wayne is the captain, no matter what – on or off the pitch.”
It is perhaps a measure of the same selflessness that Rooney called it a day when he was back in favour with the national set-up after an encouraging start at his boyhood club Everton. Only six caps separated him from Peter Shilton’s English record, but it was not something he wanted through token cameo appearances as a substitute. He left on his own terms.
