“Remember the name, Wayne Rooney!”
The above piece of commentary by Clive Tyldesley in October 2002 has aged like a bottle of Barolo. Commentators and supporters alike are fans of superlatives and the hyperbolic. It is oh-so-easy to get excited about a young player. Everyone wants to be the one to ‘discover’ the next big thing. It rarely pans out though… Anyone heard from Federico Macheda recently…?
With Wayne Rooney however, the hype was real. The young 16 year old from Liverpool flourished into a bona fide legend of the modern game, transferring to Manchester United and becoming their all-time top scorer, as well as the top scorer and appearance holder for England.
While he won nothing with the Three Lions, his efforts in 2004 were truly worthy of a medal. It’s hard to comprehend quite how good Rooney was in the mid 2000s. His career was full of ups and downs; his personal life splashed across the tabloids weekly, his war of words, via an agent of course, with the Old Trafford hierarchy caused headaches. He was a hot-head too. We all remember the stamp in 2006 on Cristiano Ronaldo. Throwing the ball away against Fulham. Mouthing off to his own fans to camera during the 2010 World Cup.
He was an angry man, and yet that anger was perhaps his greatest strength. He boiled over at times, but when Wazza harnessed that anger he was an unstoppable force of nature. In the June of 2004 that force of nature flew to Portugal in a star-studded England squad with the likes of David Beckham, Michael Owen, Frank Lampard and Paul Scholes. Were England expected to win the tournament? Perhaps not, but they were there to try their darnedest, and with players of that quality in the squad, their best may just be good enough.
France were their big rivals in Group B, and it looked like England had the edge over them in their opening game. England were ahead thanks to a Lampard goal, but lost the game with two 90+ minute French goals overturning the lead. Look beyond the box score however, and you can see how devastating the Everton forward was. To a younger reader, think of a hybrid of Mbappe and Haaland, the blistering pace of the Frenchman but with the sheer muscle and force of the Norwegian.
England should have been two goals up. David Beckham saw a penalty kick saved, but that penalty was given because of Rooney. With 15 minutes to go, Beckham cleared the ball out of his own box to hamper a Les Bleus attack. The clearance found Rooney, 10 or so yards inside his own half. Rooney flicks it over the head of former world champion Lillian Thuram, uses his strength to get past the Juventus full back on the halfway line and then charges towards goal with the impending sense of doom you’d see from a rolling boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark. As soon as he gets into the box he shimmies left and is felled by Mikaël Silvestre.
The penalty was saved but it was a statement of intent. Rooney had transcended the young star label at Goodison. He had found his feet on the world stage. He was at the European Championships and he was determined to make his mark.
The France heartbreak was tough to overcome, but England and Rooney didn’t have long to mope. Four days on and Rooney & co. were suited and booted in the Estádio Cidade de Coimbra to take on the Swiss. To quote the Miley Cyrus song, Rooney came in like a wrecking ball. Little over twenty minutes into the game and he rose to meet a Michael Owen lofted pass to head beyond Jörg Stiel, becoming the youngest player to have scored at the Euros – a record he held for a full four days!
If Rooney’s first goal was a delicate flick of his head, the second was sheer pace and power. As Darius Vassell battled with the two Swiss defenders, Rooney saw the gap. Vassell placed the perfect pass for the 18 year old to latch on to, in acres of space at the edge of the penalty box. He cut back onto his right foot with the whole world assuming he was going to smash it into the top right corner. Instead he hit it low to his left, the tightest angle imaginable, beyond defender and goalkeeper. The shot caught everyone offguard, bouncing off the goalpost, onto the head of Stiel and back into the net.
He was simply unplayable, and the goals kept coming. Back in Lisbon, Croatia were his next victims opponents. Going into the final group game, all four teams still had the possibility to qualify, and things looked worrisome five minutes in when Croatia took the lead. England drew level through a Paul Scholes header, assisted by Rooney. A loose ball in the box came to Rooney at head height. The natural thing to do for any player would be to take a pop at goal, but not Rooney. He was so often criticised in life for being a tad dim, but when it came to footballing intelligence he was extremely savvy. He flicked the ball to his right, to a wide open Paul Scholes.
The act of selflessness was just what England needed, and was rewarded in spades in additional time of the first half. Scholes sprayed a pass wide to Rooney who, some 25 yards out, thwacked it. An absolute thunder-bastard that left the goalkeeper helpless. He ran to the crowd with outstretched arms and stood there, being bearhugged by David Beckham. The confidence was dripping from him. He was only 18 but Rooney belonged on this stage as much as Zidane, Figo and the other raft of top-tier talent in Portugal.
Not content with the one goal, Rooney doubled his tally. A one-two with Michael Owen on the halfway line saw the Liverpudlian pick up the ball around 45 yards out, Owen’s pass catching out the entire Croatian defensive line. Cool as a cucumber, Rooney took the ball to the edge of the penalty box before slotting it past the keeper. He was no goal poacher; he was a machine. A powerhouse. A dog.
All good things must come to an end, much to the chagrin of England fans. Just 27 minutes into the Quarter Final against Portugal and Rooney was down injured. Jorge Andrade collided with Rooney and things looked bleak. It transpired that he had broken a bone in his foot, the fifth metatarsal. The dream was done.
I won’t delve into the rest of the game, nor the tournament. We all know how it went. Rooney’s replacement, Vassell, missed the crucial penalty. Portugal went to the final and lost to Greece. We all know it. What we don’t know, what we can’t know, is that would have happened if Rooney hadn’t been injured. He was hounding the Portuguese defence and the form he had shown in the group stages was fearsome. Could he have won the game for them? Could he have taken England to the final, even win it for them? Maybe. The sad fact of the matter is he didn’t. It was cruel, but it was life. That’s football.
Perhaps for Rooney it was a blessing. He is quite possibly the most driven and determined player that England has produced. He was talented, but as the years went on and he lost a touch of his physical attributes, he kept finding a way to succeed. He overcame trials and tribulations time and time again in his career, and in my opinion, he was chasing the dream that was this tournament. He was chasing the 18 year old Everton forward that had the world at his feet.
Sure, he didn’t win anything with England, but he will go down as a Three Lions legend for sure. He’ll go down as a Manchester United legend too. And an Everton one, even if that relationship did sour for a bit. And while his time at DC United was short, I’m sure those in the District of Colombia, USA, will remember him fondly. Especially that ludicrous chase-down halfway line goal.
Every international tournament has stars and wonderkids, some deliver, some don’t. Some thrive in the moment and others we don’t appreciate til we look back wistfully many years later. Rooney though, Rooney was different. He was hotly tipped going in, and he delivered, he delivered in every game, with four goals in as many games, an assist and a penalty won, earning him a spot in the official team of the tournament. Martin Tyler said it best after Rooney scored from distance against the Croatians: “It is Wayne’s world. It’s certainly Wayne’s championship.”
Heart of Football 
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