The omertá Sir Alex Ferguson established at Manchester United is not as watertight as it once was. Wayne Rooney demonstrated during his garlanded playing career he was an erudite observer of the game and he has become more candid in retirement.
In the film Rooney , the 2010 episode of his transfer request is rushed through, told via archive footage of Ferguson's compelling press conference at Old Trafford and his addresses to the nation on MUTV. Rooney reflects off-screen but has the last word.
“Actually, if you look five years down the line from that meeting, Alex Ferguson knew where the club was going and he got out of there as quick as he could and they're still picking up the pieces now.”
Like Roy Keane, Rooney dares to go where no other teammate would. Keane traced United's downfall to Ferguson's dispute over the Rock of Gibraltar stud rights that indirectly led to the takeover by the Glazer family. Rooney was critical of Ferguson's tactics in the Champions League final surrenders to Barcelona in 2009 and 2011 and his concern over United's squad rebuild was prescient.
"We sold Tevez and we sold Ronaldo, so I was the one player left of high profile," Rooney says. "I went into Alex Ferguson’s office and said to him, ‘what’s the plan here? At the minute, we’ve brought in two young English players who are unproven’. I remember Alex Ferguson’s response was, ‘Get out of my office’.
“They were offering me a contract of £200,000 a week. So it would have been quite easy for me to say, ‘five years, £200,000 a week, let me sign it now. But I wanted success on the pitch. That means more to me."
Tellingly, Ferguson does not contribute to the film, nor did he for the BBC's Rooney: The Man Behind the Goals in 2015. Ferguson had his own Amazon film to plug last year but perhaps even Jeff Bezos cannot arrange a detente between United's greatest manager and goalscorer.
Gary Neville, a staunch Rooney loyalist as a teammate and pundit, opines the 2010 incident ‘damaged (Rooney) with the fans’. That has always been truer than the mythical suggestion Rooney was unpopular by virtue of being Scouse. The Evertonian once professed his hatred for Liverpool on the official United website before it was removed.
Click here to watch 'Rooney' on Amazon Prime Video
In the United AD (after dominance), few care to highlight Ferguson's culpability in their demise and it is apposite their last trophy was lifted by Rooney following his final appearance for the club in 2017.
It is impossible to condense a career as dramatic and laden with peaks and troughs as Rooney's into 104 minutes. Rooney warrants an epic running time of a picture from the Hollywood Golden Age but Amazon cap it at under two hours for the smartphone generation. In hindsight, splitting his career into hour-long chapters - Everton, United, England, private life - would have been more satisfying.
The constraints are apparent. The early footage is from Derby's 3-0 FA Cup defeat to United in March 2020, the week before football in England was suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The film's denouement is rushed and there is no mention of Rooney's return to Everton in 2017.
Rooney's United career is covered so fleetingly his career-defining ankle injury against Bayern Munich in April 2010 is erroneously deemed to have been against Schalke. There is no mention of how badly it ended with Ferguson in 2013 or his fascinating four years under David Moyes, Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho. Perhaps because Rooney averaged almost a trophy a year in his 13 years, there is a misconception that portion of his career was not cinematically compelling.
With streaming services now effectively a household appliance, there are a myriad of football-related films, almost of them told with the blessing of the protagonist. Rooney is not the pure propaganda of the Leeds documentary and commendably addresses his issues at different stages of his life, with his wife Coleen forthright on his transgressions.
As is often the case with these biopics, the most fascinating segment is the backstory and in Rooney's case, his upbringing in Croxteth. He talks movingly about his late nan, heating her blanket before bed and watching Prisoner Cell Block H, heading to moshpits knowing he would have to raise his fists and the day the Everton talent-spotter Colin Harvey caught him walking home with a bottle of cider.
The film overly dwells on Rooney's England career, doubtless to maximise the engagement time of a wider audience. There is intimate footage of Rooney in the Euro 2004 camp as a fearless teenager and the burdened 20-year-old in Baden-Baden two years later. The Portugal portrait is of Rooney in his pomp and, now there are no remnants of turf from his boots to sweep up, he reflects on that period as his best. It was.
Nothing encapsulates it better than Rooney wearing longer studs with the intention of harming an opponent on Chelsea's coronation day in 2006. United were battered 3-0 and Rooney left on a stretcher with his metatarsal broken. His United career was 18 months old and the only winner's medal he possessed was the Carling Cup.
*’Rooney’ is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video from Friday.
