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Wayne Rooney, last of the great English footballers, an appreciation

Wayne and ball
Boy meets ball: Wayne Rooney Credit: AFP

Wayne Rooney was England’s best footballer of his generation, and he was certainly the most important. As the sport becomes ever-more about fitness, not making mistakes and the primacy of pseudoscience over raw genius and leathering it, he was the last link to a simpler age. He was English football’s last great hero.

Monday night against Manchester City was a typical Rooney performance, and then, a typical reaction to it. Watching on the television, I saw him touch the ball three times in the first half.

One of them was the goal, when he got in a good position and hit the target, letting The New Loris Karius in City’s nets do the rest. The only other times he was on screen where when he was arguing with the referee about things that were nothing to do with him. Whatever he has and has not achieved in football, his status as British sport's greatest-ever barrack-room lawyer is beyond dispute.

In the second half, he ran around a lot and did some more arguing. He tried to lob the keeper from 45 yards and got it spectacularly wrong. 

For Sky and the media in general, Wayne was the story of the match. Wayne is always the story of the match. And that is because Wayne is the story of English football.

Rooney and Beckham at Euro 2004
Breakout star: with David Beckham at Euro 2004 Credit: AFP

Wayne has been really, really bloody good at football, often for several games in a row, but rarely for extended periods. He has wellied the ball into the net almost without disruption since 2002, and set goalscorer records that will stand for some time. He had one decent international tournament – four matches – in 2004. Britney was top of the charts.

He has also never been quite as good at football as we wanted him to be. Around the turn of this decade, he was a world class player for a couple of seasons. But his game was never suited to controlled, sustained, precision quality. He has been too instinctual, too untameable for that. Maybe his refuelling habits and his personality played a part. The environment, the over-hype, certainly did. The absolute nonsense that bloke has had to put up with about his wage, his private life, his family, how he lives his life is disgusting and would have broken lesser men.

Wayne Rooney with his wife Coleen who has revealed she is pregnant with fourth child
Together: Wayne and Coleen Credit: PA

A lot of not very nice people live in massive houses because of Wayne Rooney and his football. It was in a lot of rich and powerful peoples’ interests to hope that he would be an all-time great. When it was obvious that he was not that, it was still in their interests to carry on pretending. That is not Wayne Rooney’s fault. Indeed, he has borne ridiculous pressure and expectation with, if not exactly good grace, at least sufferance. 

It would be fitting if Wayne goes past Alan Shearer as the Premier League’s leading scorer, because nobody encapsulates English top-flight football better than Wayne. Not as good as people want it to be, but full of passion, of crazy soap opera drama, of thrilling moments followed by rank incompetence.

Wayne Rooney stretches during a team training session at the World Cup Stadium in Cologne, 19 June 2006
National treasure: Wayne Rooney Credit: AFP

Because few top players do a stinking game quite like Rooney. All those terrible performances in pathetic England displays, charging around like a Staffordshire Bull Terrier suffering from a brain injury. The ball rebounding off him, tearing about the place yelling at people, huffing and puffing like an unshaven beef tomato. Trying so hard and achieving so very little. He’s Southern Rail, outrage about a clock, starting on someone because they looked at your pint funny in the Spoons at 11am. A frothing, very English ball of rage.

Unlike a lot of footballers, he actually seems to be a football fan. Asked by the Monday Night Football presenter what it felt like to score at the Etihad, he grinned and said: “What, again?!” In an era of sculpted gym ponces who can run the 100m in 10.2 seconds but cannot actually play football, he’s a bit of a relic. He looks like a regular bloke. And not an especially in-shape regular bloke, at that. 

Wayne Rooney poses with the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year Award at BBC Television Centre in London on December 8, 2002. 
Personality: Wayne Rooney poses with the BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year Award, 2002 Credit: Getty

But his crapness is our crapness, and his occasional moments of sparkling lucid brilliance are our sporadic great moments too. He never gives up, he’s probably a good guy to go for a beer with. If you were his mate, he would back you no matter what. When it all goes right for Wayne, it’s just perfect. It’s fish and chips, it’s a first snog at a bus stop, getting pissed with your mates and telling each other that you love them.

Other countries will produce better footballers, fitter, slicker, sexier, more cultured footballers. Of course they will. They produce fitter, slicker, sexier, more cultured people. But for better or for worse, we are English, and Wayne is ours.

He is Wayne Rooney, and so are we.

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