It's time to hang up your boots, Wayne Rooney
It was in the aftermath of England’s friendly in Dortmund a year ago that the brutal reality of being Wayne Rooney was driven home.
Lukas Podolski had scored the only goal of his 130th and last game for Germany and the celebration of his accomplishments seemingly knew no limits.
There was a televised This is Your Life style show from a studio inside the Westfalenstadion and manager Joachim Low paid such a moving tribute that it was impossible not to ask why Rooney — already deposed from the England ranks, 18 months after becoming their greatest goalscorer — had never been so loved.
At the tail end of his career, Wayne Rooney is at a crossroads with what to do next in football
Gareth Southgate sensed a political minefield. ‘It helps if you have won World Cups and European Championships doesn’t it?’ he replied ‘And you can’t always predict when the end is coming.’
How prescient those words have proven to be. Dropped by club and country in the space of 18 days last year, with Jose Mourinho too sour even to extend public congratulations on him becoming Manchester United’s all-time top scorer, it transpires that even the Goodison Park refuge Rooney sought last summer was an illusion.
So much for the social media #welcomehomeWayne messages and that imaginative 60-second Everton film that went viral, capturing his walk through the corridors of the club, to the soundtrack of some of his most famous Everton moments.
The Everton striker is set to be offloaded by the club and is weighing up a move to USA or China
So he finds himself back where this wretched last 18 months began, weighing up a move away, most likely to the United States and DC United. To which any who have been captivated by his genius, his toil and his fundamental humanity will surely say: ‘Don’t do this, Wayne. It’s time to hang up your boots and call it a day. Just let go now.’
Somehow, the discussion always gravitates back to his ‘refuelling habits’ (to cite Graham Taylor’s description of Paul Gascoigne’s extra-curricular activities), to a sense of unfulfilled promise and the two fat contracts in seven years that Rooney wrung out of United.
But it is his profound misfortune that this decline has coincided with a new age of football longevity. Cristiano Ronaldo, eight months older than him, electrifies. Franck Ribery, 35, signs a 12-month contract extension at Bayern Munich. Zlatan Ibrahimovic, 36, is an instant hit for LA Galaxy.
He has found himself surplus to Everton’s requirement and sat out of the Southampton match
The inconvenient truth is that Rooney is not built like any of them. Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager who has known him better than any, often alluded to his metabolism, observing in an interview marking his eclipse of Sir Bobby Charlton’s goal record last year that Rooney and Ryan Giggs were simply made differently.
‘Wayne’s got a different physique,’ said Ferguson. ‘He’s stocky; well made. Players age in different ways.’
That would be relevant to any notion of Rooney disappearing off to play in Asia because behind the riches of China lurk the prospect of him being asked to throw himself around a football field in that country’s oppressive and deeply uncomfortable climate.
He and China have simply never seemed to fit and not only because of the sweat box it can be. Rooney no more possesses a wanderlust than Steven Gerrard ever did.
The MLS will certainly welcome Rooney with open arms. But the league, with its long-haul away games and range of climates, offers no home comforts for Rooney. It won’t be a stroll in the park.
The life Gerrard described in Los Angeles, having left his wife and daughters behind on Merseyside to join the Galaxy, sounded nothing less than lonely at times.
Rooney (right) poses with the Premier League trophy with Paul Scholes (left) and Nani (centre)
Neither does the notion of uprooting four young sons sound alluring, though the events in Alderley Edge which landed Rooney in Stockport Magistrates Court last winter demonstrated that the consequences can be incendiary when the sobering influence of Mrs Rooney is not at hand.
It’s all so different for the 35-plus brigade, whose battery of fitness solutions has given them alternatives. Ibrahimovic has long-serving physio Dario Fort, who has worked with him in Milan, Paris and Manchester. Ronaldo has his cryotherapy chamber and swimming pools. Gareth Barry, 37, has followed Giggs into yoga.
But these solutions don’t work for everyone. ‘If a player is weak at the end of the muscular range they are stretching and holding, it can worsen injuries. It doesn’t suit everybody,’ says Rob Swire, physio- therapist at Manchester United for 23 years until 2014.
The prolific striker won five Premier League trophies, one FA Cup and three League Cups
Swire, who is unable to discuss individual United players, says that the ‘wear and tear and number of games’ inflicted on a player thrown early into first-team football is a more significant factor than yoga when it comes to assessing how long a career will last. Rooney has played 491 Premier League games since the age of 16.
He is not without alternatives now. His brief TV appearances this season have demonstrated his appeal, while his managers these last few years consistently describe an intelligence which makes coaching a more realistic option than it once seemed. Both are infinitely better routes than the twilight journey Gascoigne embarked upon, having taken his own talents to Everton in 2000.
The plan, Gascoigne reflected years later, was to ‘end my career there at the top, aged 35, still playing in the Premier League’.
Yet he instead found himself surplus to Everton’s requirement, washing around the second tier on £5,000 a week at Burnley, on the promise of a share of gate receipts if the team went up. And then, having rejected a derisory offer from DC United, heading out to China to play for Gansu Tianma.
‘The Sars virus had started, all their football games were off,’ Gascoigne related. ‘So I came home and never went back. They still owe me money.’
The symmetries make this a salutary tale for Rooney. Both are individuals who touched the heights, lit up the game. Both are entitled to be remembered for better.
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