Clank!
That’s the sound I heard pulling into Everton’s training ground at 8.30am. Clank, as the ball was smashed off the crossbar. The man-boy was already dripping sweat.
Clank!
Wazza spun and hammered leather off metal.
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It was immediately apparent that sports science and Wayne Rooney were not bedfellows. He just launched straight into his work - he didn’t believe in stretching or early morning gym sessions to prehab his powerful frame. I wonder if that came later in his career. Not sure. But for the two years we shared a changing room at Goodison Park, I witnessed a wunderkind in motion.
That goal against Arsenal at 16. Capped by Sven Goran Eriksson at 17. Unplayable at Euro 2004. Hat-trick on debut for Manchester United in the Champions League, bicycle kick in the derby, breaking Bobby Charlton’s goal record ... Everton part II, Derby County player-manager ... sacked by Birmingham City after less than 13 weeks and 15 matches (nine defeats).
Recently, Rooney spoke about drinking himself unconscious in his 20s just to cope with the limelight. I never saw that. At Everton, I encountered a ferocious trainer every single day. It was unsustainable. I was the same. Eventually your body pays a toll on Saturday afternoons.
Rooney would horse into tackles. Remember how he reacted to Cristiano Ronaldo humiliating his pal Tony Hibbert at Old Trafford?
Clank!
The scything lunge earned him a yellow card. That was Wayne. He identified the problem, anywhere on the pitch, and sorted it out.
Unique. I’ve never come across a similar sportsperson. Luke Littler lost the world Darts final this week. At the same age Rooney was a Premier League star.
He risked injuring himself and others but that intimidating intensity washed away in the showers. A genuinely good lad, a scouser full of devilment, people were out to get him straight away. Especially the paparazzi or whoever sneaked into his orbit with a mobile phone. Easy fodder was Wazza. But for 13 seasons he was the most complete player in British football. He could master any position. A superstar who trained and played like he had something to prove.
A lifetime later I covered his 1½ years as DC United manager for TSN Sports. That’s what he was, a manager, not a coach, and that’s not sustainable any more.
DC United had the worst roster in the MLS. He made them a little better. The same could be said about the stint at Derby County.
Rooney did not bring his family to Washington. Football management has become a near impossible pursuit for any parent. The gaffer’s partner and kids suffer the most by his or her absence. On a quiet day, it’s a 16-hour shift.
The job requires specific character traits. Birmingham City, and their new investor Tom Brady, hired a name rather than a proven manager. Whispers about Rooney’s methodology could hurt his career, but he deserves another chance simply because he was denied a transfer window to put his stamp on this squad.
Now, let’s be honest, nobody is coming out of Rooney’s 15 games in charge with credit. At least his assistant coaches John O’Shea and Ashley Cole were retained by the club.
Watch this space. Brummie lad Lee Carsley is a strong candidate to replace him. Unless the FAI turns his head.
There is no comparison between Rooney’s coaching education and what Carsley put himself through. To master the craft, a person must work at multiple levels of the game over a sustained period. As it stands, it would be easy to slot Rooney into the same realm as Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard. Big names from an underachieving England generation who lacked the know-how to run a big club.
The modern manager needs to be a head coach. And the head coach needs an identifiable style.
Birmingham City fans should be concerned about their American owners. Brady, of all people, is supposed to know what a head coach looks like in any sport after winning six Super Bowl rings under Bill Belichick.
In fact, the NFL has pioneered the modern coaching blueprint by recruiting men in their 30s, many of whom did not play the game professionally. They were too busy building a career, brick by brick.
Rooney felt “13 weeks” was not enough time to “oversee the changes that were needed” at Birmingham. Nowadays managers must hit the ground running. He knew this.
Experience is half the battle. Gerrard, Lampard and Rooney were naive to expect to compete with coaches who have 10-year head starts. Their limitations, from in-game tactical decisions to being club spokesperson, were immediately obvious.
Vincent Kompany is an exception but his last three years playing at Manchester City were under Pep Guardiola and, like Pep, Kompany had his first club to fall back on when smoothly changing career as Anderlecht player-coach.
There are outliers such as Carlo Ancelotti and Zinédine Zidane – great players who became great managers – but Rooney is not in that category. Nor should he be lumped definitively into the Gerrard and Lampard box.
Not yet. We’ve known him forever, but he is only 38, several years younger than those two former England team-mates and he’s never been in charge of a club with the kind of resources that Lampard inherited at Chelsea and Gerrard had at Aston Villa. There’s a future in media if the managerial merry-go-round turns Rooney out, but that’s not a foregone conclusion. The thing is, he’s likely to struggle to interest a club with the conditions to enable success. That’s his catch-22 now.
