Wayne Rooney: My Decade in the Premier League (2 page)

I see a space opening up in the penalty area. City’s two man-mountain centre-halves, Joleon Lescott and Vincent Kompany, move and get ready for the incoming pass. I run into a few yards of space, guessing where the ball will land. My senses are all over the place.

It’s hard to explain to someone who’s never played the game or felt the pressure of performing in front of a big crowd before, but playing football at Old Trafford is like running around in a bubble. It’s really intense, claustrophobic.

I can smell the grass, I can hear the crowd, but I can’t make out what’s being sung. Everything’s muffled, like when I’m underwater in the swimming baths: I can hear the shouting and splashing from everyone around me in the pool, but nothing’s clear, I can’t pick out any one voice. I can’t really hear what people are yelling.

It’s the same on the pitch. I can hear certain sounds when the game slows down for a moment or two, like when I’m taking a corner or free-kick and there’s a strange rumble of 20,000 spring-loaded seats thwacking back in a section of the ground behind me as I stand over the ball, everyone on
their feet, craning their necks to watch. But it’s never long before the muffled noise comes over again. Then I’m back underwater. Back in the bubble.

The ball’s coming my way.

The deflection has changed the shape of Nani’s pass, sending it higher than I thought, which buys me an extra second to shift into position and re-adjust my balance, to think:
I’m having a go at this
. My legs are knackered, but I use all the strength I have to spring from the back of my heels, swinging my right leg over my left shoulder in mid-air to bang the cross with an overhead kick, an acrobatic volley. It’s an all or nothing hit that I know will make me look really stupid if I spoon it.

But I don’t.

I make good contact with the ball and it fires into the top corner; I feel it, but I don’t see it. As I twist in mid-air, trying to follow the flight of my shot, I can’t see where the ball has gone, but the sudden roar of noise tells me I’ve scored. I roll over and see Joe Hart, City’s goalkeeper, rooted to the spot, his arms spread wide in disbelief, the ball bobbling and spinning in the net behind him.

If playing football is like being underwater, then scoring a goal feels like coming up for air.

I can see and hear it all, clear as anything. Faces in the crowd, thousands and thousands of them shouting and smiling, climbing over one another. Grown men jumping up and down like little kids. Children screaming with proper passion, flags waving. Every image is razor sharp. I see the colour of the stewards’ bibs in the stands. I can see banners
hanging from the Stretford End: ‘For Every Manc A Religion’; ‘One Love’. It’s like going from black and white to colour; standard to high-definition telly at a push of the remote.

Everyone is going mental in the crowd; they think the game is just about won.

From nearly giving the ball away to smashing a winning goal into the top corner: it’s scary how fine the margins are in top-flight footy. The difference between winning and losing is on a knife edge a lot of the time. That’s why it’s the best game in the world.

*****

We close out the game 2–1. Everyone gathers round me in the dressing room afterwards, they want to talk about the goal. But I’m wrecked, done in, I’ve got nothing left; it’s all out there on the pitch, along with that overhead kick. The room is buzzing; Rio Ferdinand is buzzing.

‘Wow,’ he says.

Patrice Evra, our full-back, calls it ‘beautiful’.

Then The Manager comes into the dressing room, his big black coat on; he looks made up, excited. The man who has shouted, screamed and yelled from the Old Trafford touchlines for over a quarter of a century; the man who has managed and inspired some of the greatest players in Premier League history. The man who signed me for the biggest club in the world.
The most successful club boss in the modern game
.

He walks round to all of us and shakes our hands like he does after every win. It’s been like this since the day I signed for United. Thankfully I’ve had a lot of handshakes.

He lets on to me. ‘That was magnificent, Wayne, that was great.’

I nod; I’m too tired to speak, but I wouldn’t say anything if I could.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing better than The Manager saying well done – but I don’t need it. I know when I’ve played well and when I’ve played badly. I don’t think,
If The Manager says I’ve played well, I’ve played well
. I know in my heart whether I have or I haven’t.

Then he makes out that it’s the best goal he’s ever seen at Old Trafford. He should know, he’s been around the club long enough and seen plenty of great goalscorers come and go during his time.

The Manager is in charge of everything and he controls the players at Manchester United emotionally and physically. Before the game he reads out the teamsheet and I sometimes get that same weird, nervous feeling I used to get whenever the coach of the school team pinned the starting XI to the noticeboard. During a match, if we’re a goal down but playing well, he tells us to keep going. He knows an equaliser is coming. He talks us into winning. Then again, I’ve known us to be winning by two or three goals at half-time and he’s gone nuts when we’ve sat down in the dressing room.

We’re winning. What’s up with him?

Then I cotton on.

He doesn’t want us to be complacent
.

Like most managers he appreciates good football, but he appreciates winners more. His desire to win is greater than in anyone I’ve ever known, and it rubs off on all of us.

The funny thing is, I think we’re quite similar. We both have a massive determination to succeed and that has a lot to do with our upbringing – as kids we were told that if we wanted to do well we’d have to fight for it and graft. That’s the way I was brought up; I think it was the way he was brought up, too. And when we win something, like a Premier League title or the Champions League trophy, we’re stubborn enough to hang onto that success. That’s why we work so hard, so we can be the best for as long as possible.

Everyone begins to push and shove around a small telly in the corner of the room. It’s been sitting there for years and the coaches always turn it on to replay the game whenever there’s been a controversial incident or maybe a penalty shout that hasn’t been given – and there’s been a few of those, as The Manager will probably tell anyone who wants to listen. This time, I want to see my goal. Everyone does.

One of the coaches grabs the controls and forwards the action to the 77th minute.

I see my heavy touch, Scholesy’s pass to Nani.

I see his cross.

Then I watch, like it’s a weird out of body experience, as I throw myself up in the air and thump the ball into the back of the net. It doesn’t seem real.

I reckon all footballers go to bed and dream about scoring great goals: dribbling the ball around six players and
popping it over the goalkeeper, or smashing one in from 25 yards. Scoring from a bicycle kick is one I’ve always fantasised about.

I’ve just scored a dream goal in a Manchester derby
.

‘Wow,’ says Rio, for the second time, shaking his head.

I know what he means. I sit in the dressing room, still sweating, trying to live in the moment for as long as I can because these moments are so rare. I can still hear the United fans singing outside, giving it to the City lot, and I wonder if I’ll ever score a goal as good as that again.

*****

I’ve played in the Premier League for 10 years now. I’m probably in the middle of my career, which feels weird. The time has flown by so quickly. It does my head in a little, but I still reckon my best years are ahead of me, that there’s plenty more to come. It only seems like five minutes ago that I was making my debut for Everton against Tottenham in August 2002. The Spurs fans were tucked away in one end of Goodison Park. When I ran onto the pitch they started singing at me:

‘Who are ya?’

Whenever I touched the ball:

‘Who are ya?’

They don’t sing that at me anymore. They just boo and chuck abuse and slag me off instead. Funny that.

In the 10 years since my debut, I’ve done a hell of a lot. From 2002 to 2004 I played for Everton, the team I supported as a boy; I became the youngest player to represent England in 2003, before Arsenal’s Theo Walcott had that record off me. In 2004 I signed for Man United for a fee in excess of £25 million and became the club’s highest-ever Premier League goalscorer. During the European Championships that same year, the England players nicknamed me ‘Wazza’; the title seems to have stuck.

I’ve won four Premier League titles, a Champions League, two League Cups, three FA Community Shields and a FIFA Club World Cup. I’ve scored over 200 goals for club and country, and been sent off five times. I’d be lying if I told you that I haven’t loved every minute of it. Well, OK, maybe not the red cards and the suspensions, but everything else has been sound.

The funny thing is, the excitement and adrenaline I felt on the night before my league debut for Everton in 2002 still gets to me. The day before a game, home or away, always feels like Christmas Eve. When I go to bed I’ll wake up two or three times in the night and roll over to look at the alarm clock.

Gutted. It’s only two in the morning.

The buzz and the anticipation are there until the minute we kick off.

I’ve paid the price, though. Physically I’ve taken a bit of a battering over the years; being lumped by Transformer-sized
centre-backs or having my muscles smashed by falls, shoulder barges and last-ditch tackles, day in, day out, has left me a bit bruised.

When I get up in the morning after a game, I struggle to walk for the first half an hour. I ache a bit. It wasn’t like that when I was a lad. I remember sometimes when I finished training or playing with Everton and United, I’d want to play some more. There was a small-sided pitch in my garden and I used to play in there with my mates. When I trained with Everton, I used to go for a game down the local leisure centre afterwards, or we used to play in the street in Croxteth, the area of Liverpool where I grew up with my mum, dad and younger brothers Graeme and John. There was a nursery facing my house. When it closed for the day, they’d bring some shutters down which made for a handy goal. I loved playing there. After I’d made my England debut in 2003 I was photographed kicking a ball against that nursery in a France shirt.

Footy has had a massive impact on my body because my game is based on speed and power. Intensity. As a striker I need to work hard all the time; I need to be sharp, which means my fitness has to be right to play well. If it isn’t, it shows. It would probably be different if I were a full-back; I could hide a bit, make fewer runs into the opposition’s half and get away with it. As a centre-forward for Manchester United, there’s no place to hide. I’ve got to work as hard as I can, otherwise The Manager will haul me off the pitch or drop me for the next game. There’s no room for failure or second best at this club.

If there is a downside to my life then it’s the pressure of living in the public eye. I’d like just for one day to have no-one know me at all, to do normal stuff; to be able to go to the shops and not have everyone stare and take pictures. Even just to be able to go for a night out with my mates and not have anyone point at me would be nice. On a weekend, some of my pals go to the betting shop before the matches start and put down a little bet – I’d love to be able to do that. But look, this is the small stuff, I’m grateful for everything that football has given me.

There is one small paranoia: like any player I’m fearful of getting a career-ending injury. I could be in the best form of my life and then one day a bad tackle might finish my time in the sport. It’s over then. But I think that’s the risk I take as a player in every match. I know football is such a short career that one day, at any age, the game could be snatched from me unexpectedly. But
I
want to decide when I leave football, not a physio, or an opponent’s boot.

Don’t get me wrong, the fear of injury or failure has never got into my head when I’ve been playing. I’ve never frozen on the football pitch. I’ve always wanted to express myself, I’ve always wanted to try things. I’ve never gone into a game worrying.

I hope we don’t lose this one.

What’s going to happen if we get beat?

I’ve always been confident that we’re going to win the game, whoever I’ve played for. I’ve never been short of belief in a game of footy.

I’m so confident, I’m happy to play anywhere on the pitch. I’ve offered to play centre-back when United have been hit by injuries; I’ve even offered to play full-back. I reckon I could go there and do a good job, no problem. I remember Edwin van der Sar once busted his nose against Spurs and had to go off. We didn’t have a reserve goalie and I thought about going in nets because I played there in training a few times and I’d done alright. Against Portsmouth in the FA Cup in 2008, our keeper Tomasz Kuszczak was sent off and I wanted to go in then, but The Manager made me stay up top because Pompey were about to take a pen. I could see his point. Had I been in goal I wouldn’t have been able to work up front for the equaliser.

When I was a lad, I thought I’d be able to play football forever. These days, I know it’s not going to last, but the funny thing is I’m not too worried about the end of my career, the day I have to jack it all in. If I’m ever at a stage where I feel I’m not performing as well as I used to, then I’ll take an honest look at myself. I’ll work out whether I’m still able to make a difference in matches at the highest level. I’m not going to hang around to snatch the odd game here and there in the Premier League. I’ll play abroad somewhere, maybe America. I’d love to have a go at coaching if the opportunity comes up.

The thing is, I want to be remembered for playing well in football’s best teams, like United. I want to burn out brightly on the pitch at Old Trafford, not fade away on the subs’ bench.

*****

Hanging up my footy boots is a way off yet. There’s more stuff to be won. I want more league titles, more Champions Leagues – anything United are playing for, I want to win it. I’m into winning titles for the team because winning personal achievements, while being nice, isn’t the same as winning trophies with my teammates. And whatever I do, I do it to be the best that I can. I’m not good at being an also-ran, as anyone who has played with me will know.