Wayne Rooney: My Decade in the Premier League (14 page)

When the team is announced, The Manager tells me he’s playing me on the right flank again; England midfielder Owen Hargreaves is right-back. Ronaldo is upfront with Tevez behind him. It’s hard to take at first, but when the game starts I work all over the pitch, tracking back, running the wing, putting tackles in all over the park. The aim is to defend hard and hit them on the break. It nearly pays off in the third minute when one of their defenders handles the ball at a corner.

Penalty!

The ref gives it, but when Ronnie steps up he smacks the ball against the post. I know we’ve blown a great opportunity to get an away goal.

When the team misses a chance like that it takes the wind out of our sails for a brief moment – an away goal against a brilliant side like Barça would be invaluable. The
miss is forgotten pretty quickly though. We dig in deep and I barely get forward. I hardly make it to the box. I’m that focused on not letting Barça score that I only put in one cross all game. Instead of creating chances I track their left-back Eric Abidal, who loves to get forward. Every time he pushes on I stay with him, trailing his runs, cutting out passes. Their central midfielder, Andrés Iniesta – a maestro, always making the game tick with his quick passing – keeps cutting inside from the Barça left, making it even harder.

Bloody hell, I’m working, working, working. This is doing me in.

I’m also playing through the pain. During the recent game against Blackburn Rovers I was smashed by their centre-half, Ryan Nelsen, in a tackle. The game finished up a 1–1 draw, but the personal damage was severe. Nelsen’s knee caught me in the hip and it’s badly bruised. Before the game, the doc put a pain-killing injection in my backside which was probably more painful than the sensation in my hip. Now, as the injection wears off, I’m in agony.

The game is on a knife edge; we’re holding Barça, they’re dominating possession. Scholesy and Michael Carrick are staying tight in the middle; Carlos’s trick with the gym mats is paying off. It’s probably our best defensive performance of the season so far and we scrape a goalless draw. I know it’s not the most attacking performance by us, and afterwards I realise that playing out wide is not a position I love, but as long as I’m on the pitch and United are one step closer to getting into a cup final, then I’m made up.

*****

We play Chelsea away and Barça at home in the same week. If we beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on the Saturday we’ll need one more point from our final two games to win the Premier League. If we get a result against Barça at Old Trafford, we’ll be in the Champions League final in Moscow. It’s a mad period in the season and it’s not being helped by the fact that my hip still isn’t right. I’m in a lot of pain. I’m not the only one. When the Chelsea match gets under way, Nemanja Vidic gets a knee in the face during the first half and has to go off. Chelsea score just before half-time. Then, in the 57th minute I latch onto a poor back pass from Ricardo Carvalho and draw the game level. Almost as soon as the ball hits the back of the net, my hip gives out. Pain shoots up and down my leg and I can barely celebrate. It’s agony. The Manager takes me off straightaway and the scans afterwards tell me one thing:
You won’t be playing in the second leg against Barça, Wayne.
I’m gutted. United eventually lose 2–1 against Chelsea, meaning we’ll need to win our next two league matches to retain the title. I’m on the sidelines and unable to help the team out.

A couple of days later I go to Old Trafford for the second leg of the semi-final like every other fan and watch through my hands as Barça try to pick us apart. Scholesy scores a great goal, a 25 yarder, to put us in the driving seat, but shortly afterwards the match turns into a one-sided affair: Barça in attack, United in defence. It’s horrible to see. Every time they get the ball, I’m convinced they’re going to score.

Their striker Lionel Messi has a chance.

Iniesta has a chance.

Thierry Henry has a header at the end of the match but he can’t put it away.

Now I understand just what the fans must go through during games of this importance. My heart’s in my mouth all the time, I feel nervous. Sick. Stressed. When the final whistle goes I’m suddenly struck with this mad wave of relief, and then a glowing sense of satisfaction.

We’re in the Champions League final.

The biggest game in club football.

*****

We beat West Ham in our penultimate game of the season, which leaves us needing a win at Wigan on the last day of the campaign to take the title. We’re tied at the top of the table with Chelsea on points, ahead on goal difference. The Wigan game is like a cup final because if we lose or draw and Chelsea win against Bolton, then they take the title. If we both draw, United win the Premier League.

Before the kick-off, the fans are up for it. We’re up for it, but typically so are Wigan – I know that they want to ruin our party. As the game starts, everyone’s nervous but focused on the job, and by half-time, we’re a goal up, a Ronaldo penalty. As we walk off the pitch nobody can really tell how Chelsea are doing. The Manager isn’t helping – he reckons he hasn’t heard anything.

We know he has.

In the dressing room, as everyone sucks on their energy drinks, we hassle the coaches, the physio, Albert the kit
man, anyone who might give us a clue. We’re all asking the same thing.

‘Are Chelsea losing?’

Each one of them shrugs, shakes their heads, makes out they haven’t heard us. In the second half we get another goal, putting the game to bed and bringing the title back to Old Trafford. It doesn’t matter what Chelsea do after that (they draw 1–1), the league is ours.

Afterwards I walk around the pitch, waving to friends and family again, but this time I think about playing for Everton in 2002 when I watched United win the title on our patch. Goodison Park was nearly empty. The only people in the ground were their fans at one end. I was in the tunnel watching it all, feeling sick with jealousy, thinking the same thing as everyone else in the ground not connected with United.

I need that to be me one day.

It’s taken a few years but as I walk round the pitch with Scholesy and Giggsy and Ronaldo at the JJB Stadium, I get the buzz of celebrating a title win in a nearly empty football ground. I’m bouncing. It doesn’t matter that there’s only a few thousand United fans here, it feels like a cup final win.

Later that night we celebrate, but it’s not as rowdy as our night out in Manchester last season. The players and their wives and girlfriends are attending the club player of the year awards rather than drinking in a city bar. Nobody’s really up for it though. Everyone’s thinking of the challenge ahead – doing a league and Champions League double. We’re playing Chelsea in the final in Moscow next week after
they defeated Liverpool in the other semi. Still, after a beer, I sit with Michael Carrick and the pair of us try to liven things up a little. We get on a microphone and start singing.

‘Champione! Champione! Ole, ole, ole! Champione, Champione …’

We tail off. When I look around the room, no one else is singing with us. The older lads like Giggsy, Paul Scholes and Gary Neville have been here before. They know there’s more hard work to come. They know we can do all the celebrating we want after Moscow. Fair play, they’re right.

Their experience runs through this whole club.

Nothing prepares me for the size of a Champions League final, not even the semi-final against Barça. In the week leading up to the game, everyone’s excited, everyone’s talking about it. I go to training and hear stories from the lads who were there for the 1999 final when we beat Bayern Munich 2–1. Players like Gary Nev and Giggsy tell me how mad it was when we thieved the winner in injury time. I chat to some of the ex-players like Ole Gunnar Solksjaer, who scored the last-minute winning goal. He’s been working with the strikers at Carrington. He tells me about the buzz of playing in the final and the noise of the fans in the ground afterwards.

In a magazine interview, Teddy Sheringham even relives the team talk at half-time. We were a goal down when,
apparently, The Manager went into the dressing room and started staring at the team. He pointed to the door.

‘Go out there and take a good look at that trophy,’ he said. ‘Because if you don’t get back into the game in the next 45 minutes, that’s the closest you’re going to get to it.’

This week, the whole country is excited because it’s an all-English final.

Manchester United v Chelsea
.

The day before the game we fly to Russia, The Manager gets all the players together for a meeting and makes us study a DVD of the 1999 final. I can barely remember seeing it the first time around. I was only 13 back then. It was on at home in Crocky and I saw it on the telly with my dad and my brothers.

When I watch the game now, I can’t believe how much Bayern Munich battered us.

They should have been three or four up at half-time. No way should we have won 2–1
.

Then The Manager gives one of his team talks.

‘That game is the history of the club,’ he says, turning the sound off, the screen still playing pictures of David Beckham running round with the trophy after the final whistle. ‘It proves that as a team we never give in. Bayern Munich should have been out of sight after 45 minutes, but because they weren’t, we knew we’d get a chance to get back into it. When we did, we punished them with an equaliser. We still believed we were going to win the game when the clock went into injury time. And that’s exactly what happened.’

He shows us the team celebrations afterwards. Teddy Sheringham, David May, Peter Schmeichel hugging one another. The Bayern players sitting on the grass looking gutted. Paul Scholes and Roy Keane in their suits, suspended for the game. They’re jumping around with the lads, the Champions League trophy in their hands.

Then he tells us he wants to see the same from us afterwards in the final against Chelsea.

‘There will be times in the 90 minutes when Chelsea are going to be on top,’ he says. ‘But you’ll have to keep your focus, keep your heads. If you do that, we’ll create chances and win the game.’

He turns the box off. Everyone in the room is sitting still, dead quiet.

‘And remember,’ he says. ‘No regrets.’

*****

Moscow, 15:42.

I’m in my hotel room, several hours before we line up with Chelsea on the pitch.

I’m going mad.

Today is the longest day ever
.

The kick-off for the game is at 10.45 tonight and we’ve got hours to kill before we even travel to the stadium. I’m desperate to leave my room and play, warm up, kick a footy around, anything. It’s going to be ages before we can even get into our pre-match routine, so I try to sleep, but I can’t.

I watch the telly. It’s boring.

I sit. I’m fidgety.

I stand. I pace around the room, listening to tunes on my iPod.

This is a nightmare. I’ve been chatting to some of the Chelsea lads during the week and I know they’re probably just as excited as I am. They’re probably going through the same thing. I also know we’ve got an England game coming up next week and if we lose tonight, I’m never going to hear the end of it.

We cannot lose this game
.

I’m anticipating everything about the match. The dressing room, the crowd, the walk to the pitch, my first touch of the ball. I try to switch off, to focus on scoring, but for six hours all I can think is:
How good would it be if we win tonight?

The worst part of being a footballer, I reckon, is the waiting. Sitting on my backside, hanging around like I am now. It’s amazing the amount of waiting I do as a Premier League player. I compete for 90-plus minutes on a weekend, but before that I hang around for hours doing nothing. Nothing but waiting; waiting and thinking about what might happen.

This game against Chelsea tonight, the biggest club game in the world, is just the same as any other home match really. We trained this morning, got on the team coach and started the wait. Then we came back to the hotel and waited some more. We ate, talked tactics, had a massage and waited. Every weekend is the same as today: moments of action and loads of waiting around. It can be really boring sometimes, a bit like being caged up, even in a city as far
away and as mad as Moscow, because it’s not like I can go for a walk outside and see the sights.

I wish I could take a pill and fall asleep. I want to wake up and for it to be time for kick-off
.

The wait is the hardest part; the game tonight will make it all worthwhile. But only if we win.

*****

The hanging around is broken up by a team meeting. The Manager names his side:

1/ Edwin

3/ Patrice

4/ Owen Hargreaves

5/ Rio

6/ Wes

7/ Ronnie

15/ Vida

16/ Michael Carrick

18/ Scholesy

32/ Carlos

10/ I’m up front with Carlos, Ronnie’s on the left wing.

Sound
.

When the waiting ends and it’s time to work, I sit at my seat in the dressing room. Red shirt, white shorts, white socks. Footy boots on. I pray.