Wayne Rooney: My Decade in the Premier League (4 page)

I’m getting fouled all the time. With a minute left, the ball comes to me and somebody hacks at my ankles again, but the ref gives the decision to the other lot. I’m furious. I pick up the ball, meaning to luzz it to Jonny Evans, but I misjudge it and the ball flies hard past the ref.

He thinks I’ve thrown it at him.

Oh no, here we go
.

Out comes the second yellow card, then the red. Game over.

I can only think of one thing.

This is going to cost us the league
.

Two defeats on the bounce; a suspension for the next match. I’m livid. The red mist comes on. As I walk off the pitch, the crowd start to jeer. Everything boils up inside me, my head’s banging. Sometimes in those situations, I get so angry that I never know what I’m going to do next. Thankfully, nobody gets in my way. The first thing that crosses my path is the corner flag. I lamp it. When I get to the dressing room, I punch the wall and nearly break my hand.

Paul Scholes is already sitting there, staring at me, just watching, as if it’s only natural for me to stick a right hook onto a concrete wall. He’s had time to shower and change. He’s looking smart in his official club suit.

‘You as well?’

I nod. My hand is killing me, I worry I might have busted it.

Nice one, Wayne
.

Neither of us says a word. I sit there in my kit, fuming. Then a flash of fear comes into my head.

Oh god, The Manager’s going to kill me
.

I hear the final roar from the crowd as the whistle goes. We’ve lost, 2–0. I hear the players’ studs clicking on the concrete path that leads to the dressing room. The door opens, but nobody talks as they sit down.

Silence.

Nobody looks at me. Giggsy, Jonny Evans, Rio, Edwin van der Sar, all of them stare at the floor. Then The Manager comes in and goes mad.

‘You were poor as a team!’ he screams. ‘We didn’t perform!’

He points at me, furious, red in the face, chewing gum.

‘And you need to calm down. Relax!’

The Manager’s right: I should relax, but he knows as well as me that the thought of losing is what drives me on in football, in everything, because he’s built the same way.

We both hate to be second best
.

*****

Look, I’m not always happy about it.

After the Fulham game, I worry that people have an opinion on what sort of person I am because of what they see on the football pitch. They see me punching corner flags and shouting on the telly and must think that I’m like that in everyday life. They watch me going in hard in the tackle and probably assume that I’m some kind of thug. Sometimes, when people see me pushing my son Kai around the supermarket with Coleen, they stare at me with their jaws open, like I should be in my kit, shinpads and boots, arguing with the bloke collecting the trollies, or kicking down a stack of toilet rolls in a massive strop.

These are much cheaper down the road!

I’m not like that though.

When I first meet people I’m quiet and shy. I don’t open up that easily. I definitely don’t react badly in conversation and I don’t talk to friends and family in the same way as I talk to defenders and teammates. I don’t tell them to ‘eff off’ if things don’t go my way. I don’t turn the computer off if I’m watching my pals play. Losing it only happens when I’m
competing. And only if I lose. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s something I’ve had to live with. I obviously have two very different mindsets: one that drives me on in the thick of a game and another I live my life by. The two never cross over.

¹
John Donnelly, if you’re wondering, is now a professional boxer, a super flyweight. I spent a lot of time thinking about becoming a pro fighter too, but in the end I went for football.

Matches are won and lost in the tunnel at Old Trafford, but the one thing I notice when I stand there for the first time as a United player is that it seems to go on for miles and miles. It’s long and dark. The ceilings are low and the players bump into one another as they walk to the pitch, almost shoulder to shoulder, because it’s so narrow and cramped. At the end, over the heads of players, officials and the TV cameramen, past the red canopy that stretches out onto the pitch, I can see the bright green blur of the grass, the floodlights and the crowd and some United fans hanging over the edge of the wall, shouting and waving flags.

It’s September 2004, United against Fenerbahçe. I’m about to make my first-team debut in the Champions League, a competition I’ve always dreamt of playing in.

The noise is mad, a buzz of 67,128 people, like a loud hum. When I first played here against United for Everton that buzz weighed me down a bit. It felt claustrophobic, it felt like a cup final. It did my head in. Now it pumps me up, but I can see why some players might feel trapped in here. Standing in the Old Trafford tunnel is like being in a box. If a footballer hasn’t been here before and they’re lined up next to the United players for the first time, it’s a terrifying moment. The weight of expectation is huge. A player has to be able to handle it if they’re going to be able to play well in front of the crowd here.

The Manager knows all about the importance of this place. The atmosphere is such a big deal that he even makes it his business to find out which players from the opposition have faced us here before and which ones haven’t. He tells us before a game; he knows who’s frightened and he wants us to know, too. Sometimes, as we get ready he lists names from the other lot, the lads playing here for the first time – they’re the ones who might not be on their game.

Later in the season I see it for myself. In some teams, the newly promoted ones usually, the players look scared as they start their walk to the pitch. Others look as if they’re starting their big day out for the season, or even their career. I can tell that they want to make the most of it, that they want to soak up the occasion. They clock their families in the stands and smile and wave like it’s their biggest ever achievement. As they make the slow walk from the tunnel in the corner of the ground to the halfway line they’re thinking one thing:
Bloody hell, this is Old Trafford
. Good news for us:
the distraction can stop them from thieving a point. Bad news for them: they’re 1–0 down psychologically.

Now I’m about to make my first walk from the tunnel in a United shirt.

Today it’s all about my signing, my first game. I’ve been at the club nearly two months, but I haven’t played a minute of first team football after I busted a bone in my foot at Euro 2004, which has been annoying for everyone because I cost the club a lot of money. Still, the fans have been sound. I see them on the box and they’re saying how excited they are to see me here, but the one worry at the back of my mind is that it might take a while for them to accept me because I’m a Scouser. I might have to do something really special to win them over.

They’re on my side tonight, though. The crowd are singing my name before I even get onto the pitch.

‘Rooney!’

‘Rooney!’

‘Roooooooo-neeeeee!’

The shivers run down my spine as I walk into the glare of the floodlights for the first time in a red shirt. I’m bricking it.

It makes me laugh whenever I watch the tape of that game now: I come out of the tunnel with a chewy in my mouth and my eyes don’t seem to move as I walk across the grass. I don’t even blink. I stare straight ahead, trying to focus. The camera catches me puffing my chest out, getting
myself ready, staring at the sky above the massive stand in front of me. I don’t look at anything in particular, just a space above that huge wall of people which seems to stretch up forever, full of red and black and white and some yellow and green.

I want to soak up the noise.

I don’t want to turn round.

I don’t want to see how massive everything looks.

Bloody hell, this is Old Trafford.

*****

Everything had been so quiet and calm before.

I sat in the dressing room ahead of the game and watched as everybody prepared themselves. I saw some of the biggest names in the league getting ready: winger Ryan Giggs stretching his skinny frame, Gary Neville bouncing on the spot; Dutch striker Ruud van Nistelrooy and Rio Ferdinand playing two touch with a ball, their passes pinging off the concrete floor. It was totally different to the atmosphere at Everton.

At Goodison it was rowdy and loud, people shouted, yelled, issued instructions. It dawned on me that some teams have to win games through team spirit; they have to fight harder for one another. Pumping up the dressing room builds a strong attitude. It helps to psyche out the opposition. Before the Fenerbahçe game I noticed that everyone in a United shirt prepared in their own way – calmly, quietly. No one screamed or shouted. They knew that if we played
well we’d win the game no problem. There was no need to scream and shout.

I felt like I’d come to the right place.

*****

I make a good early pass. Well, I take the kick-off so I can’t really mess that one up. My first proper touch comes a few moments later and I play that one well, too. I’m running on pure adrenaline.

I want to impress everyone. I want to show them what I can do.

Then, in the 17th minute I score my first-ever United goal.

Ruud plays me through. I’m one-on-one with the goalie and everything slows down – the weirdest feeling in football. It seems to take an hour before I get to the penalty area, as if I’m running in really thick mud. My brain goes into overdrive like it always does in this situation, as if it’s a computer working out all the sums needed to score a goal.

Is the keeper off his line?

Is a defender closing in on me?

Should I take it round the goalie?

Should I shoot early?

Will I look a divvy if I try to ’meg him and I hit the ball wide?

A one-on-one like this is probably the hardest thing to pull off in a game because there’s too much time to process
all the info, too much time to think. Too much time to overcomplicate what should be an easy job.

I’m just going to put my foot through it, see what happens.

I hit the ball with all my strength and it rockets into the back of the net. Old Trafford goes nuts. Right now I doubt anyone cares whether I’m a Scouser or not, I’m off the mark. Mentally I loosen up, I feel like I can express myself a little bit, try a few things. Not long afterwards, Ryan Giggs plays a ball across to me. I drop a shoulder, do my defender and fire the ball into the bottom corner. Now the crowd are singing my name again; now I’m daring to dream.

What would it be like to score a hat-trick at Old Trafford?

I find out in the second half. There’s a free-kick on the edge of the Fenerbahçe area and Giggsy, with all his amazing ability and experience, puts the ball down to take it, but I want it. I’ve got bucketloads of confidence and I fancy my chances, just like I did whenever I got into the ring with a bigger lad in Uncle Richie’s boxing gym. I just know I’m going to score – it’s mad, I can almost sense it’s going to happen.

‘Giggsy, I’m putting this one away.’

He hands the ball over and I curl a shot into the top left-hand corner, easy as you like. Goal number three, a hat-trick on my Old Trafford debut.

We win 6–2 and in the dressing room afterwards everyone seems to be in a state of shock. I don’t think anybody can believe what I’ve just done out there. I can’t get my brain around it either. Rio sits there shaking his head, looking at me like I’ve just landed from outer space. The older lads, like Gary Nev and Giggsy, are thinking the same thing, I can tell,
but they’re keeping it in. They’ve probably seen amazing stuff like this loads of times before with players like Eric Cantona and David Beckham, so they stay silent. They probably don’t want to build me up just yet. To them, my hat-trick is part of another day at the office, just like it is to The Manager, who shakes my hand and tells me I’ve made a good start to my United career.

Nobody’s getting carried away.

There isn’t a massive party to enjoy afterwards, no one gets bevvied up or hits the town. Some players I know would be out with their teammates having scored a hat-trick on their debut. Instead, everyone goes home. But not me, I haven’t even got a gaff to go to. Coleen and I are living out of a hotel while we look for a new house, so to celebrate the start of my Old Trafford career we order room service and watch the match highlights on the box, but it all seems so weird.

I feel numb.

I always knew that I was going to experience a massive change in my life by signing for United, but I didn’t expect it to be this big. The strangest thing is, I don’t feel like I’m on the verge of anything special. I don’t feel like a special player. I’ve never felt that way, even as a kid playing for Everton. Tonight as we sit eating our room service tea I feel confident, confident that I have the ability to help United win games and trophies, but I can see that everyone else in the dressing room has the ability to do that, too.