Readers have been asking what I make of Wayne Rooney wanting to leave Manchester United.
The stroppiest email, from AbooSalik two hours ago, says this :
Mr.Palmer,
I have been on your site more frequently last few days anticipating some write-ups on Rooney, your favourite player, the gladiator as you liked to call him. Still a gladiator then, Palmer? Or you still going to go on about Wenger not bringing up enough English players? You see the difference in loyalty? Fabregas, a born and bred Barca fan with Barca in his DNA, could not leave Wenger, yet your man who you idolised is nothing but a mercenary.Come on Myles, admit it and give Wenger his due for once.
Well, since March, Rooney has played more like a zombie than a gladiator, as I have noted many times. Most footballers are mercenaries. Since the Eighties, the game has been mostly about money. Before that it was a sport.
Fabregas, my favourite Premier League player, still wants to leave Arsenal. In his post-Shakhtar interview alongside Wilshere, Fabregas’s demeanour had an element of distance which I’ve never seen or heard before. What he said was polite PR. As I’m sure you know, Cesc is not a prole like Wayne. He’s the middle class son of a property developer.
On Rooney, I don’t think it’s a really a row between Wayne and Sir Alex. I reckon it’s a battle between his agent Paul Stretford and United chief executive David Gill.
It looks as if Stretford has told his client: You’re the PFA player of 2010, the Football Writers Footballer of the Year, you’ve scored 34 goals for a team that’s just lost Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez, you should be earning more than John Terry and Frank Lampard. You should be on £200,000 a week
The agent may also have also told Wayne that the Glazers have ruined the club and Sir Alex is past it.
After his award-winning season, when United lost their title to Chelsea, Rooney had a goalless World Cup for a rubbish England team, and came back into pre-season training and found that Sir Alex wanted to play Berbatov at centre forward and him as the support striker.
So he told United in August that he would not sign a new contract. His current one had two years to run.
Sir Alex said last night that Wayne Rooney’s future will not become a saga. He insists the door is still open for Wayne to sign a new contract for £160K, the biggest contract ever offered to a Man Utd player.
The statements by Sir Alex and Rooney have been carefully scripted as both sides take up their positions, so this story is already a saga. The last four days have been all about positioning. Sir Alex said he was “dumbfounded” to be told by Stretford that Wayne wanted to leave, and Rooney now says he doubts “the continued ability of the club to attract the top players in the world” and “win trophies.”
This morning Sir Alex will meet David Gill, who spoke to the Glazers last night, following United’s 1-0 victory over Bursaspor.
As soon as this story blew up my first thought was : Wayne Rooney can’t survive outside the North West of England. Ian Rush could not hack it at Juventus, Mark Hughes was a flop at Barcelona, and Wayne could never adapt to Madrid or Barcelona. He could only rebuild Merseyside in a big house in Spain. So his options are very limited.
It’s a crazy way for Rooney to behave because the timing is so bad. You don’t do this in October. You can’t say in August that you won’t sign a new contract and then sulk in October when the manager drops you to help you sort out your private life. You don’t throw your toys out of the pram after eight league games and say : I want to put on a sky blue shirt and play for the sheikh down the road, like my old mate Carlos.
Manchester City have done nothing and won nothing and proved nothing. We don’t even know if they can beat Arsenal on Sunday.
Right now Wayne Rooney looks like a deeply misguided scouse toddler who is burning all his bridges at Old Trafford by telling the world that this team and this club are not good enough for him. He hasn’t scored a league goal since March but he says the club do not match his ambition. It’s a calculated impertinence.
The Berbatov factor hasn’t been discussed enough. Sir Alex knows he can’t play Berbatov in front of Rooney because Berbatov is too static. And he can’t play the Bulgarian behind Rooney because he is too static there as well. It’s a conundrum that cannot be solved and he could lose Rooney, the most gifted English footballer since Bobby Charlton, partly because those two are incompatible partners.
If Rooney stays and works through this, he can mature.
If he goes to Man City, he will always be a baby who repeats this behaviour. It’s a shame because I don’t think Rooney is anywhere near as thick as many people make out. He’s just uneducated and unworldly. You can take the boy out of Croxteth but you can’t take Croxteth out of the boy.
Maybe he should sit down with Clarence Seedorf for two hours and ask Clarence to explain real success to him. Rooney is a stocky footballer who was a teenage star at Everton and Seedorf is a stocky footballer who was also a teenage star at Ajax. Both made their debuts at 16.
Seedorf won the Champions League with Ajax in 1995, won it again with Real Madrid in 1998, and then went to Milan and won it again in 2003, lost the final to Liverpool in 2005 and won his fourth Champions League Final when Milan beat Liverpool 2-1 in Athens in 2007
Rooney is 25 on Sunday while Seedorf is 34 and still an automatic pick for Milan, still playing classy football for a classy team at a big club.
Of course, Seedorf has had his disappointments and traumas, as all footballers do, but he has built a major career in a mature fashion and earned worldwide respect. Rooney could learn a lot from him.
It’s true that Seedorf has played for five clubs. He went to Sampdoria before he joined Real Madrid, and played for Inter before he joined Milan in 2002.
Who knows? Maybe wise man Clarence would advise Rooney to join Chelsea and then look at how Citeh are doing in three years time.