Perhaps the best place to start is by going back to the Friday lunchtime at Manchester Unitedâs training ground when the football writers who followed the club in Sir Alex Fergusonâs slipstream were given early notice that we should think very carefully about our line of questioning when it came to Wayne Rooney, superstar.
It was December 2004, just a few months after Rooney had joined the club and every journalist who was present that day will remember the scene in Unitedâs old press room.
The door was to the right of the main reception. There was a table at the front, a row of seats, a coffee machine that had not worked for years and not much else. The blinds always seemed to be drawn and, with no television cameras present, it was here that we used to witness, close-up, some of Fergusonâs more volcanic rages.
That day, however, saw what is widely regarded as the mother of all eruptions and a lesson, undoubtedly, for all of us that Unitedâs manager wanted to establish some ground rules when it came to the footballer who had just become the most expensive teenager in the history of the sport.
The previous weekend, the television cameras had caught Rooney pushing his hand into the face of Tal Ben Haim, the Bolton Wanderers defender. Haim had gone in for some pretend agony and, to borrow a line from Rooney several years later, gone down âlike a bag of shiteâ.
Rooney after clashing with Ben Haim (Photo by Matthew Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
But Rooney had messed up. He was facing a disciplinary charge from the FA and a three-match ban. Ferguson had been stewing on it for nearly a week and what we saw, once the door slammed shut, was a manager who was willing to defend his player to the ends of the earth.
(The tape was kept for nostalgic purposes and apologies, in advance, for all the swearing but perhaps in this case it is better to tell the story asterisk-free)
âAlex, we have to ask you about the Wayne Rooney incident, him slapping the Bolton player.â
He started off calmly. âWell, because itâs Wayne Rooney, because itâs Manchester United, yes, I can understand there is going to be a focus on it. But my bigger concern, and you are not even addressing it, is the Bolton player, what he did. He laid down on that ground pretending he was injured for two whole minutes.â
âI think we accepted that he did thatâŚâ
âYou accepted itâŚ?â
And that was the point his temper went off like a car alarm.
âWELL, YOUâVE NOT FUCKING WRITTEN ABOUT IT! Youâre fucking on about Rooney because he has a wee slap in the face and no matter whatever fucking else matters in the fucking game? You see fucking behaviour like that! He should be fucking up before the FA, not fucking Rooney. You are allowing that fucking c*** to cheat. Youâre on about Rooney all the time, why not go and fucking blast him, THAT FUCKING BEN HAIM? Why Rooney?â
What do you say to a man who is this angry?
âBut Alex, heâs probably the most famousâŚâ
âFUCK OFF! It doesnât matter, heâs a human being like everybody else. Heâs 19 years of age. Jesus Christ, what do you fucking want? Blood out of the boy? You fucking crucify him every fucking time. Heâs a fucking 19-year-old boy, right?â
Somebody in the front row tried to pacify him. âHe hasnât been crucifiedâŚâ
It was a mistake. Ferguson was leaning across his table, half out of his seat. âA joke, it is. Their fucking boy should be up before the FA for that. Itâs a fucking disgrace. And Iâm not fucking saying anything more about it now. Itâs up to you to fucking do it. FUCKING JOKE, HE IS. Lying about, rolling about in fucking agony. Any other player than Rooney you wouldnât have bothered your arse.â
That was the point Ferguson swung his arm at the tape recorders on his table and sent them flying into a wall ten feet away. One belonged to Diana Law, who was in charge of Unitedâs media department at the time. It smashed open, the batteries scattering across the floor.
Even by Fergusonâs standards, this was pretty spectacular.
We were used to seeing him lose his temper but, once the flares behind his eyes burned themselves out, he also had a habit of switching from fury to good humour in the space of 30 seconds. His face would return to its normal colour and suddenly he might be asking if we have any more questions, maybe even making a joke at our expense.
Not this time, though.
It felt like Ferguson wanted to make a point. He was letting us know that, if we had any questions about Rooney in the future, we could ask them if we liked but there was also an underlying danger that he might see it as a personal affront.
It was Ferguson establishing his version of the Rooney rule: he wanted his audience to think twice before asking something he might not like. And, the way it was back then, repeat offenders would be banned from press conferences. Ferguson knew there was an insatiable appetite for Rooney headlines. He just wasnât prepared to go along with it.
The dust-up with Ben Haim was Rooneyâs first indiscretion as a Manchester United player and his manager had come out swinging to defend him. âItâs over, right?â was Fergusonâs parting shot, and he was already making his way to the door. âYou can get out. Press conference finished. Youâve got me to lose my temper. Wonderful.â
The saddest thing, perhaps, is that there is no real warmth between the two of them these days.
Together, the most successful British manager of all time and the most prolific scorer in Manchester Unitedâs history spent nearly a decade with their lives intrinsically entwined. Today, though, the relationship is cold. âThey have respect for each other,â one former United colleague says. âThere will always be that respect. But they also feel let down by one another.â
Ferguson wrote a tribute in Rooneyâs testimonial programme and showed just about enough restraint in his autobiography, perhaps mindful of his position as a club director, to make sure his criticisms of the player could not be seen as a personal attack.
Rooney, in turn, makes sure to mention Ferguson whenever he is asked to name the people who have done the most to shape his career. He will always compliment Ferguson for the years when United dominated the landscape of English football. When Ferguson was rushed to hospital for emergency brain surgery, Rooney appeared on Twitter. âGet well soon, Boss,â was the message.
He and Ferguson are both aware that, however badly it ended between them, they were good for one another. Brilliant, in fact.
âI loved working with Wayne,â Rene Meulensteen, one of Fergusonâs coaches, tells The Athletic . âHe was such a competitor. He would always come up to me before training every morning: âRene, what are we doing this morning?â He was a great trainer because, simply, he loved football.
âI look back at his career at Manchester United and it was remarkable. If you look at the goals he scored, the leagues he won, all the other trophies he won and the contribution he made, it was a very illustrious career. And he scored goals that we will remember for decades.â
Fergusonâs recollection of the young Rooney was that he âpossessed a marvellous natural talent and was entitled to be given time to make the transition from boy to man. He was a serious, committed footballer with a hunger for the game.â
There was also no doubt Ferguson saw a bit of himself in Rooney.
He liked the way Rooneyâs priority was winning football matches rather than haircuts or fashion or spending time with the glitterati. He liked the raw, streetwise edges that meant Rooneyâs nickname at Everton was âDogâ and gave him his self-belief, at the age of 18, to shout back at Roy Keane if Unitedâs captain ever bawled him out. âI wasnât scared of Keane,â Rooney once said, âI wasnât scared of anybody.â And Ferguson wasnât scared of anybody either. There were many occasions, over a number of years, when he viewed Rooney with almost paternal pride.
The night, for example, when Rooney scored a hat-trick on his debut against Fenerbahce and Ferguson found out his player had not been able to get the ball off the Belgian referee Frank De Bleeckere at the final whistle. The Scouse accent had clashed with De Bleeckereâs French (where Rooney is from âlaâ is normally a term of endearment). Ferguson left the dressing room to find the referee and returned a few minutes later with the ball under his arm.
Rooney unsuccessfully asks the referee De Bleeckere for the match ball (Photo: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
Fergusonâs affection for Rooney was evident in the âdearie meâ kind of laughter when he used to tell his stories about what the player was like on the training pitch.
One of his favourites was about how the coaches â Meulensteen, Tony Strudwick, Mick Phelan, Jim Ryan â used to take turns to referee Unitedâs training games and dread giving a decision against Rooneyâs team. Rooney might have been the youngest player on the pitch but he gave them so much hell they suggested to Ferguson that perhaps he should referee, as the only one with real authority at the club. âThereâs no way Iâm putting myself through that,â was Fergusonâs response. The club even talked about bringing in proper referees.
At other times Ferguson and his coaches used to have a heck of a battle to make sure Rooney did not overdo it. âThere were many times Iâd get told off on a Friday morning because he just wouldnât go in,â Eric Steele, the former goalkeeping coach, tells The Athletic . âHeâd take free-kicks, heâd go in goal. In the end, weâd just go in and leave him.â
Not that Rooney was spared on the occasions he pushed his luck too far. âI admit I gave Wayne a few rollickings,â Ferguson writes in his last autobiography. âHe would rage in the dressing room when I picked him out for criticism. His eyes would burn as if he wanted to knock my lights out. The next day he would be apologetic. When the anger subsided he knew I was right â because I was always right, as I used to tease him.â
The other players would marvel sometimes at the way Rooney liked to play by his own instincts, rather than following instructions. âI saw him (Ferguson) once have a go at Rooney,â Ritchie De Laet, the former United defender, says. âWe were playing at home. He came in at half-time and said to Rooney: âYou are a strikerâ â I canât say the swear words â âYou have to stay up the pitch, you are dropping too deep.â Rooney said, âBut I am not getting the ball.â If someone didnât do their job he (Ferguson) would go crazy. âIf I say you have to be up there, then you have to be up there!â Second half, Rooney scored two. I could imagine him (Ferguson) going mental in a huge game.â
Ultimately, though, it did not need long in Fergusonâs company to realise, in their happiest times, that there was a special bond between manager and player.
History will remember Rooney as the man who replaced Sir Bobby Charlton as the all-time record scorer for club and country. For United, 197 of his 253 goals came in the Ferguson era. For England, he accumulated 64 of his 120 caps with Ferguson as his manager.
Rooney won five Premier League titles at Old Trafford and keeps the medals on a mannequin, wearing one of his United shirts, in the trophy room he has built into his Cheshire mansion.
The team of Rooney, Ronaldo, Tevez et al have legitimate credentials to be recognised as the most formidable side Ferguson ever put together. They were unlucky to come up against Pep Guardiolaâs Barcelona, who were even better, in successive Champions League finals. But they still had Moscow, 2008, and the euphoric moments when Edwin van der Sar saved Nicolas Anelkaâs penalty and a 66-year-old man could be seen dancing in the torrential rain, kicking out his legs in strange, unco-ordinated little circles. Ferguson, it must be said, did not have the grace of Gene Kelly, but his efforts to give it a go made it clear what it meant to him to be reunited with the European Cup.
(Photo: John Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
All of which makes it feel so unsatisfactory that the Ferguson-Rooney dynamic would shift so dramatically over the following years. What went wrong? How was it that two men who had shared so many glories could drift apart this way?
The short answer is that, in football, it can go this way sometimes, particularly when we are talking about one of the most ruthless managers there has ever been. Roy Keane can testify for that. Quite a few others can, too. As Rooney once said: âIâm not the only player who has fallen out with Alex Ferguson.â
According to one of the people closest to Ferguson, it was his idea of a âleaving presentâ for David Moyes.
May 12, 2013.
It was Fergusonâs last game in charge at Old Trafford, with Swansea City the opposition, and as the players lined up to acclaim their manager there was only a cursory handshake between him and Rooney. Just the briefest touches of flesh on flesh, barely any eye contact.
Everything that day was about Ferguson, bowing out after 26 years as manager, with the Premier League trophy waiting to be collected on the pitch.
Yet Rooney was not in the team and Ferguson chose that day to go against one of his oldest managerial principles. A man who normally went to enormous efforts to keep everything in-house seemed unusually keen to get the story out. Rooney, he said, wanted to quit the club. âI donât think Wayne was keen to play, simply because heâs asked for a transfer.â And suddenly the headlines were shaped in an entirely different direction.
(Photo: John Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
Was it true? Did Rooney really ask to leave the club that has just wrenched the title back from Manchester City?
Rooney has always insisted it was a distortion of the facts and that he was entitled to be aggrieved that a private conversation had been made public that way.
The playerâs account is that he was unhappy about losing his place in the previous few weeks and had said to Ferguson that, if United no longer saw him as a mandatory first-team pick, it might not be worth him staying at the club. That was not the same, Rooney has always maintained, as asking formally to leave, or saying he definitely wanted to go. Ferguson announced it on television â and something broke that day in their relationship.
What is beyond doubt is that Ferguson had started to lose trust in Rooney. âIn my final year, when he was left out a few times, I felt he was struggling to get by people and had lost some of his old thrust,â Ferguson admits in his autobiography. âHe was capable of making extraordinary contributions⌠but, as time wore on, I felt he struggled more and more to do it for 90 minutes, and he seemed to tire in games.â
It was also widely accepted at Old Trafford that their relationship had never been quite the same since the flare-up, in October 2010, when Rooney not only questioned Unitedâs ambitions under Ferguson but gave serious thought to exploring the possibilities of trying to engineer a transfer to Manchester City.
Rooney ended up withdrawing his transfer request on that occasion, as well as issuing a public apology and saying sorry in private to his team-mates, but it was an extraordinary period in the clubâs modern history and Ferguson, to give him his due, was entitled to see it as a direct challenge to his authority.
When, after all, has another footballer dared to challenge Ferguson about his transfer recruitment and, in effect, accuse him of not being ambitious enough?
Rooney was unhappy about Cristiano Ronaldoâs departure to Real Madrid, unconvinced by the arrival of Chris Smalling and reluctant to stick around if City, two years into their Abu Dhabi ownership, were the future of English football. He was in the midst of new contract negotiations at the time and when he took part in Gary Nevilleâs Soccerbox on Sky Sports last year he made no bones about the fact he had openly questioned the manager.
âI was gutted when he (Ronaldo) left. I went in to see Alex Ferguson. I said to him, âWhatâs going on? Weâve sold Tevez, weâve sold Ronaldo, whoâs coming in?â No disrespect, but we had bought Smalling not knowing whether (he was) good enough. If I was going to commit myself for another five years, I didnât really want to be waiting to be part of Alex Ferguson building a team to get there in five yearsâ time.â
Rooney certainly had some front: he also asked Ferguson for an explanation about why United had not challenged Real Madrid for the signing of Mesut Ozil from Werder Bremen. âMy reply was that it was none of his business,â Ferguson clarified in his book. âI told him it was his job to play and perform. My job was to pick the correct teams. And so far I had been getting it right.â
Rooney had pushed his luck too far and, if there is one thing we should all know about Ferguson, it is that he did not take kindly to players thinking they could take him on.
âIt was just a situation where the two parties wanted to protect their own interests,â Meulensteen says. âThat happens from time to time. Sir Alex dealt with it, and resolved it, and it was never an issue again after that. Football is football. Sometimes people have different preferences and different opinions.â
Was it, though, never an issue again? There are many others at Old Trafford who suspect what subsequently happened in 2013 was a classic case of Ferguson making sure he had the final word. The truth, many believe, is that Ferguson had decided that United would be better off without Rooney and had taken it upon himself to accelerate the process of easing him out.
Steele is loyal to them both and will speak at length about Rooneyâs achievements at Old Trafford. In particular, he remembers Rooneyâs more spectacular goals: the bicycle kick against Manchester City, the volley against Newcastle United, the game at West Ham when he put one in from near the halfway line. âWayne has to be up there in terms of being one of the top players of the modern era,â Steele says. âThat scoring record is there for people to see, both for club and country.â
Equally, Steeleâs take is that Ferguson usually gets the big decisions right. âYou never challenge the manager. Sir Alex has been the master of people challenging him. âWhy have you let him go? Kanchelskis? Stam? Ronaldo?â In the end, you would never challenge the man,â he says.
âIt was about Manchester United, it was about the football club, it was never about individuals. There will always be opinions but, ultimately, when people have challenged the manager, youâre challenging the club. And in the end, he was a fantastic judge of how long a playerâs career could last and how long that player was going to be of benefit for the club.â
For the United press corps, it had certainly become noticeable that Ferguson did not speak about him with the same affection as before. Rooneyâs liking for the occasional cigarette was well known. Drinking was another issue and, specifically, Rooneyâs fondness for the occasional blowout. Fergusonâs view was Rooney âneeded to be carefulâ and that his qualities âcould be swallowed up by a lack of fitness.â And, Fergie being Fergie, perhaps there was only so long his patience would hold out.
Rooney had already been dropped for a game against Blackburn on New Yearâs Eve in 2011, along with Jonny Evans and Darron Gibson, after turning up for training reeking of booze from a Boxing Day night out in Southport. That incident did not just leave Ferguson questioning Rooneyâs professionalism. Some of Rooneyâs own team-mates were left wondering how he could behave that way during a hectic schedule of Christmas games.
The Athletic has been told there were other other occasions in Rooneyâs final season with Ferguson when the players and staff were disappointed about the strikerâs behaviour.
There was also the issue of how Rooney dealt with Robin van Persie replacing him as Unitedâs go-to guy in attack. Rooney is always complimentary about the Dutchman and says he enjoyed playing with him. But there is at least one other United player from that time who believes Van Persieâs success was linked, ultimately, to what happened towards the end of Fergusonâs final season.
âRobinâs rise wasnât good for Wayne,â that player says. âRobin became the main man, the leading striker. Wayneâs relationship with the manager deteriorated, more so after he didnât start in some key games. We werenât stupid. We could see that the chemistry between them wasnât the same but there are times in a career when you donât see eye-to-eye with your manager. Itâs how you come through that to continue being a successful player at a club like United which matters.â
In Rooneyâs case, he lost his place to Danny Welbeck for a Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid. For a player with Rooneyâs ambitions, that was both a personal ordeal and a public humiliation. But it was also part of a growing pattern. At one stage he was substituted in four out of five games, including the one against Aston Villa when Van Persie scored a hat-trick to confirm Fergusonâs 13th league championship.
Rooney started the Champions League quarter-final at home to Real Madrid on the bench (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
Rooney was not involved at all when Fergusonâs reign ended at West Brom on the final day of the season. He was still chasing down Charltonâs record at the time, 50-odd goals short of his target, but he also knew Ferguson was staying on as a director and that would mean travelling with the team and attending club functions. Rooney rang his agent, Paul Stretford, and told him to find another club.
As it turned out, Ed Woodward was not willing to contemplate selling Rooney even if the player, and quite possibly Ferguson too, had decided it was the best option.
That was Woodwardâs first summer after taking over from David Gill as chief executive and he made it clear from the start that United could not risk Rooney scoring 20 goals a season for a rival club. Chelsea, then managed by Jose Mourinho, had made two bids but they were both turned down.
âI wanted to click my fingers and it to be September,â Woodward said once the summer transfer window had clanked shut. âWayne is irreplaceable and phenomenal to watch. Iâm delighted he is still wearing red.â
As for Moyes, he wanted to know whether he was inheriting Rooney, the real deal, or a watered down version of the player who had once terrorised opposition defences.
The question he asked Rooney in their first conversation that summer â âDo you still think youâre a top player?â â was intended to get under his skin.
Rooney replied that, yes, he still saw himself as a top player.
âThen why are Chelsea offering only ÂŁ25 million for you?â Moyes wanted to know.
Moyes wanted to see a reaction and, for a while, he got one. Rooney was outstanding for half a season but he could not keep it up and, by the time Louis van Gaal took over as manager, it was very apparent that Woodward had been far too generous giving the striker a five-year contract. Van Gaalâs verdict was delivered with typical bluntness a few years later. Rooney, he said, was âover the hillâ. The player was 28.
(Photo: IAN KINGTON/AFP via Getty Images)
He is 34 now and wears the colours of Derby County in the middle reaches of the Championship. Yet he was still at Old Trafford until 2017, four years after Fergusonâs retirement, and his achievements for United make it feel inevitable that he will hear his name being sung by both sets of supporters when his current club take on his old one in the FA Cup tomorrow.
âIn the end you can only look back at Wayneâs career and go, âYou know what⌠leading goalscorer for Man United, leading goalscorer for England,ââ Steele says. âI think Unitedâs fans will give him a terrific welcome. Everyone will remember Wayne Rooney. Yes, they have all had their lapses off the field, but you talk about what he has given, his commitment to his club and his country. You canât end up beating Sir Bobby Charltonâs record without giving fantastic service.â
One night, in particular, stands out from April 2010 when United faced Bayern Munich in the Champions League, 2-1 down from the first leg in Bavaria, and Rooney was so desperate to play he made himself available despite having damaged ankle ligaments.
The medical prognosis was he would be out for up to three weeks but Ferguson still wanted to risk him. Rooney was restricted to running in straight lines. He had to be substituted 10 minutes into the second half and missed the following game against Blackburn. What was never reported at the time, however, was that Rooney agreed to give it a go despite being on crutches on his way to Old Trafford. Rooney did not take off his protective boot until he had got to the dressing room. He has worn strapping on his right ankle ever since.
Rooney against Bayern Munich, the match he played in despite having damaged ankle ligaments (Photo: Matthew Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)
âWith players of the calibre of Wayne Rooney, players who have this sort of career, I donât think âdeclineâ is the right word,â Meulensteen says. âCareers go through phases. He came along as a very young player at Everton, took the Premier League by storm, got the transfer to Manchester United and rode that wave brilliantly as part of a very successful team.
âHe scored a lot of goals, a lot of great goals, but he was also a real team player. You could ask him to play anywhere â and we did. Sir Alex used him as a striker, as a No 10, on the right wing, on the left wing coming inside, even as a deeper midfielder at times. Wayne didnât mind where he played. As long as he was playing, he was happy.â
