When Everton manager David Moyes sent a 16-year-old Wayne Rooney on as a late substitute against Arsenal, he could never have imagined that 20 years later everyone would still “remember the name”.
On Saturday, October 19 2002, at Goodison Park, Everton were drawing 1-1 with a Gunners side who were unbeaten in their previous 30 matches.
With 10 minutes remaining Moyes replaced goalscorer Tomasz Radzinski with raw teenager Rooney, and promptly changed the landscape of English football.
In stoppage time Rooney plucked Thomas Gravesen’s hopeful punt out of the air and spun away from Arsenal right-back Lauren, 25 yards from goal.
Three touches later Rooney had curled the ball round Sol Campbell, beyond the dive of David Seaman and in off the crossbar for a sensational winner.
Five days short of his 17th birthday, Rooney had become the Premier League’s youngest goalscorer.
“Remember the name, Wayne Rooney!” exclaimed commentator Clive Tyldesley. It was the name that would be the most talked about in English football for the next decade and a half.
Moyes, who had taken over as Everton manager following Walter Smith’s sacking towards the end of the previous season, recalled: “I remember I was getting a bit of criticism at the time.
“The media were looking for Wayne Rooney to be in the team, and in a way the public were – everybody wants to see the new up-and-coming kid, and I was a bit like, ‘be careful, don’t do it too quick’. I was a young manager as well, I’d only just started at that level.
“We put him on at the time because he had such ability and he could make the difference. My memory is just of the goal, really, him pulling it down, turning and getting the shot away.
“I was thinking at the time, ‘what’s he going to do?’. We still didn’t know much about him yet. He had ability, power as a young boy to win his own fights, challenge the centre-halves, but his goal, I think it just sat up nicely for him.
“My biggest memory now is the commentary from the game: ‘Remember the name’.
“At that time in the dressing rooms at Goodison you could hear the supporters all the way down the corridor and we could hear them singing the whole way down. It was such a big moment for them – an Evertonian, one of them – it became a really big thing.
“At that time in my managerial career I wasn’t one for giving out big compliments – I probably said, ‘good goal’ to him at the end of it. But obviously I knew what it meant.”
It was a goal which signalled the start of a career in which Rooney would go on to break goalscoring records for Manchester United and England.
Moyes was quickly convinced he had a special player on his hands as he watched Everton’s youngsters reach the 2002 FA Youth Cup final.
“Walter Smith told me a bit about the squad and then said, ‘by the way, there’s a boy in the academy who’s a really good player, his name is Wayne Rooney’,” added Moyes.
“It’s one of those statements – everybody says they’ve got a good player in the academy. Will I ever see him? You never know. But that’s when he was first brought to my attention.
“Then there was the semi-final of the FA Youth Cup, he played and I watched him and thought, ‘wow’. I remember after that game I walked down, tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘look, you’ll be with me soon’.
“I don’t think Wayne at that time could really speak, he sort of mumbled something. But it was that season we took him out of school and put him on the bench at Southampton.
“It was a great story about Wayne, really. I was the one who benefitted as a manager from having an incredible talent like Wayne Rooney in the building, and not only that but ready to play when he was 16.
“There are a lot of good 16-year-olds, I’ve given a few of them debuts, but he was one who could cope physically, one who had ability and was growing into everything you recognise in his game.
“Sometimes as a manager you need good players and a bit of luck, and I certainly me having Wayne Rooney was good luck for me.”
