Wayne Rooney. The name means so many different things to so many different people: wonderkid, disappointment, captain, legend, punchline — even punching bag.
When a player becomes such a polarizing figure, it’s often, ironically, precisely because he cannot be captured by single-word labels or 140-character hot takes.
This is the case with Rooney, a man whose career has spanned 15 years and over 750 professional appearances. Rooney’s return to the club where he quite literally burst onto the scene as a 16-year-old presents us with a natural opportunity to evaluate his career and his legacy. However, making definitive judgements on Manchester United’s record goalscorer is no easy task.
The key with Rooney is to avoid the temptation to view the world in black and white. The man himself has never been subtle, from his youthful hothead demeanour to his all-action style. For a player whose early qualities seemed so obvious, he is an intricate, complex case.
The Rooney story begins, of course, with his mythic introduction to the professional game. Perhaps more than any player since, Rooney is a victim of his own genesis. The stunning last-minute winner against Arsenal in 2002 was so brilliant, so historic, so youthfully exuberant as to become unforgettable. Even all these years and accomplishments later, most fans of a certain age will have that goal etched in their memories.
The debut hat-trick for Manchester United after his £25.6 from Everton in 2004 only increased expectations. Here was a player who had not only swaggered onto the scene, but one who sought an even greater stage and then excelled from the minute he got there. He was unfamiliar with the very concept of fear — just a street-bred Scouser with ice in his veins and magic in his feet.
His first few seasons were almost without precedent in British football in the modern era. The combination of skill, maturity, drive and physical ability was possibly only matched by Michael Owen, who, by 2006 had already become something of a cautionary tale. The fact that Rooney had shown as much potential as anyone at such a young age meant that we expected the world from him. From that point, he was either going to go on to become one of the greatest ever to play the game (like fellow phenoms LeBron James, Lionel Messi, and Roger Federer) or he was going to be a disappointment.
The English hype-industrial complex did not help — it never does. People never seem to understand that players develop at different paces and in different stages. Just because Freddy Adu might have peaked at age 18, it doesn’t mean we should write off Didier Drogba at age 23. There is so much more that goes into being a top performer, year after year, than having flashes of undaunted brilliance in your teenage years.
This is precisely what makes Rooney’s most remarkable achievement even more special. Rooney’s most impressive feat was not his wonderkid early years. There are plenty of exciting teenagers: Theo Walcott, Bojan Krkic, Alexandre Pato — the list goes on.
Rather, what makes Rooney special is that he was very good for a very long time. We must look no further than his goalscoring record to see a clear picture of consistency and stability, with few peaks but practically no valleys either. Rooney scored ten or more league goals for 11 consecutive seasons at Manchester United but only managed more than 20 goals twice in his career. For comparison, Harry Kane has done it three times in his three full seasons in the Premier League.
In other words, Rooney was rarely world class. He would go through patches where the situation of the Manchester United or England team allowed him to excel and play to his maximum potential at that particular stage (which was never as high, in any case, as it threatened to be all those years ago). Most of the time, however, he was playing second fiddle to superior talents like Cristiano Ronaldo or Robin van Persie. Rooney was the perfect latter-era Sir Alex Ferguson player: functional and efficient, with a knack for finding just enough at the right time.
His versatility and his unselfishness were great assets and they enabled him to retain a place in the team. As early as 2013, however, you could see that even those powers were fading. Ferguson himself benched Rooney for the crucial Champions League quarterfinal against Real Madrid. It was the correct decision — Danny Welbeck’s athleticism and ability to provide an attacking outlet meant he was the better choice and United played very impressively against a superior team.
From that point, Manchester United’s decline, both on the pitch and off it, allowed Rooney to stick around. Ferguson probably should have sold him and may well have done so had he decided to stay another year. David Moyes never had the authority or the personality to make such a bold decision and Rooney survived.
By this time he was 27, according to his birth date. As has been well documented, however, his body was already older. He had been playing regular top-flight football for over a decade and the powerful first few steps that were such an important feature of his early game had deserted him. Despite the delusions of English punditry, he never had the qualities to make a decent midfield player. With neither the pace nor the fitness to play on the wing, his only real chance was in forward positions. His production simply was not good enough, however: He scored an average of 8.5 league goals per season in his last three years in Manchester.
José Mourinho came in last season and made two correct observations: firstly, that Rooney was no longer good enough to play for Manchester United and secondly, that the captain had to be phased out gently and in a manner that respected both the player and the club. The Portuguese is an expert in these kinds of things and Rooney was shifted out perfectly. He leaves as the club’s record goalscorer and an icon of one of the most successful club eras in British football history.
For that reason, there can be no sadness when we tell the tale of Wayne Rooney. He has had a magnificent career. Sure, he never became Cristiano Ronaldo, but he was never going to become Cristiano Ronaldo. With a little more discipline and a more focused approach to improving his game, could he have been slightly better than he was? Probably. But for every one Cristiano Ronaldo there are a dozen teenage phenoms who never achieve a quarter of what Rooney has. Rooney leaves behind a treasure trove of trophies, records and perhaps equally importantly, memorable moments.
His legacy is as complete as his game once was: fighter, leader, role player, champion.