Wayne Rooney: The apathy is damning
“You don’t want to create voids for speculation around such big players,” said Gary Neville to the BBC on Tuesday evening. “I am surprised it has not been dealt with. You don’t want that speculation to hang over a pre-season because every single press conference and media session will be clogged up with the issue of whether he is staying or going.”
Neville is both very right and very wrong. Right in that you don’t want speculation over key personnel ‘clogging up’ press conferences – see Arsene Wenger for details – but wrong in thinking that anything of the sort has happened at Manchester United.
The last tabloid claim on Rooney’s future was almost four weeks ago, the Daily Express’ June 3 exclusive that Rooney could join Everton in a player-plus-cash deal for striker Romelu Lukaku which we’ll firmly file under ‘speculative’. There have been mini back-page sagas involving Cristiano Ronaldo, Alvaro Morata, Virgil van Dijk and Alexis Sanchez, but Rooney’s name has been absent. It was predicted that when Manchester United’s highest-paid player left Old Trafford it would be amid a cavalcade of rumour and counter-rumour, but the opposite is true.
Yet this is the new norm for Rooney, who has seen both his international and club career ebb away over the last 18 months. Rather than announcing his England retirement, Gareth Southgate managed his demeaning status with the minimum of fuss. Rather than actively looking to sell Rooney, Jose Mourinho publicly insisted that he remained a key player at Manchester United, and then afforded him four league starts between September 18 and April 23.
“I am quite surprised with so many question marks around this guy,” Mourinho said last July, with customary faux innocence. “He is the club captain, he is the manager’s captain, he is the players’ captain.” Even Mourinho will struggle to style it out this summer.
Even when Rooney’s name has been linked with moves – Everton, West Ham, Stoke City – the widespread supporter reaction has been one of indifference. Rooney’s last three months can be summed up by the five words that no elite player but every bank manager wants to hear: Unnamed Chinese Super League club.
Had he moved two years ago, Rooney could have spoken of not wanting to be a bit-part player, and Paris St Germain, Bayern Munich, Milan and Inter would all have been touted as possible destinations. Now he has lost control of his ability and thus lost control of his immediate future. His quotes from last month of “making my mind up on my future” were an attempt at well-timed PR, but should he leave United it will be a choice between uninspiring destinations. Rooney is not an older player moving for a new lease of life, a la Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but one seeking a final pay-off before the passing of his career. Rooney’s slip-sliding away is a one-way journey to the bottom.
The alternative, staying at Manchester United, is hardly much more appealing (at least in a sporting context, for there is the small matter of £300,000-a-week wages). Rooney ranked first for league minutes played amongst United’s outfield players in 2014/15, fifth in 2015/16 and 14th last season. United’s summer transfer business has begun slowly – at least in attacking areas – but adding Ivan Perisic or Alvaro Morata to Anthony Martial, Paul Pogba, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Marcus Rashford and Juan Mata makes Rooney even easier to ignore.
“It is whether he can put up with not being first choice or whether he can develop his game which I had to around the same age, not being certain to play every game, but playing 25-30 games and contributing,” said Ryan Giggs on Tuesday. He’s already had to, Ryan.
For a player whose past has been almost continuously divisive, the only thing to argue about Rooney is how far his stock has fallen. Conventional wisdom says that the worst thing is not being talked about, but worse still is being talked about only as a sympathy case by former teammates and friends.
At 32, English football’s ultimate impact player has quickly become its drifter. Rooney is the opposite to the elephant in the room, standing front and centre while everybody else in the room is being discussed. “Remember the name,” was Clive Tyldesley’s advice in October 2002. We’ll never forget the name, but it’s becoming easier and easier to forget the face.
Daniel Storey
