January 18, 2021 - 5:45pm
The most fascinating English footballer of the 21st century retired last Friday: Wayne Rooney. His only serious competitors, in that regard, are David Beckham and Steven Gerrard. Beckham was a gifted footballer who also became a celebrity icon. Gerrard embodied the Roy of the Rovers fantasy: a player that single-handedly carried his side to cup victories.
Rooney was a prodigy who seemed to fulfil his potential: he is the top scorer for England and Manchester United; he has won every domestic and European club trophy. But Rooney’s career was just not about the numbers. It was also about his personality, and this is an important part of why he is fascinating.
Despite being the highest goal scorer for the national team, he looked unhappy when playing for England — the stereotype of a badly-behaved Englishman abroad. His 2010 World Cup was a disaster. After a 0-0 draw against Algeria, as the England crowd started to boo in the Stadium in Cape Town, he famously turned to a moving camera and said, “Nice to see your own fans booing you. That’s what loyal support is”.
As a nation we are fascinated by vulgarity, by any individual scorning propriety in favour of bodily desires. We are the nation of John Bull, Falstaff, Boris Johnson, and Chaucer. In fact, the latter was the first person to use the word “vulgar” in written text. I think this partly explains our interest in Rooney: cheating on his childhood sweetheart by having threesomes with prostitutes; smoking heavily in the post-Wenger world of football professionalism. It was also evident in his playing style; all that uninhibited aggression.
Like many iconic figures of English vulgarity, there is also a tender side to Rooney. On the pitch, he barks at his teammates like an army officer. But listen to him in interviews and he speaks with a vulnerable, softly-spoken Scouse accent — like a repentant schoolboy after a scolding. That combination of sadness and frivolity is evident in Chaucer’s ‘The Wife of Bath’s’ prologue, where she expresses grief at the death of one of her husbands: “I weep algate … And with my coverchief covered my visage”.
Soon afterwards she affirms the principles of pleasure and aggression when she pursues a clerk half her age: “For certes, I am al Venerien In feelynge, and myn herte is Marcien”. That mixture of promiscuity, aggression, and vulnerability is what makes Rooney a paradigmatic English vulgarian.
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SubscribeWell I happen to support Derby County, the club that he is now in charge of. They have lost the last four games without scoring a single goal, and the only Chaucerian thing about Saturday’s performance was that the players appear to have spent the night before the match with the Wife of Bath.
One increasingly fears that this is nothing more than a Prologue for relegation and ‘Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote’ he will be looking forward to the sack or the prospect of life at the third level of English football.
But never mind Chaucer, I have said frequently in recent months that he looks a little more like Henry VIII with each passing day. Then there was the time he had to quarantine because, apparently, Peter Beardsley’s brother brought a watch to his house, Peter Beardsley’s brother having been in contact with someone who tested positive. Truly, it boggles the mind.
All that said, his post-match interviews are quite lucid and honest, and he has a nice sense of humour. And when, seeing Rooney on TV about 10 years ago, a female friend commented on his stupidity I replied “He is no more stupid than the people running the country. It’s just that they have had a better education”.
“…cheating on his childhood sweetheart by having threesomes with prostitutes; smoking heavily in the post-Wenger world of football professionalism. It was also evident in his playing style; all that uninhibited agression.”
Sounds pretty Bullingdon Club to me.
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See my comment comparing Rooney to the people who run the country in the final paragraph of my comment below.
Patronising in the extreme .Rooney is from Croxteth -try visiting it and you might understand him better.Like me a son of the North west and working class Irish Catholic -unlike me a naturally gifted footballer with talent to spare-one of the best players of his generation (and I am a life long City fan!!!)-given his background and his meteoric rise as a wonderkid-he was a first team player at 16 ffs(having smashed all sorts of records as a youngster)-I’m amazed he’s as well balanced as he is.
I’m no footballer, nor an Englander, but I’m now full of admiration for Wayne Rooney, and also of a new concept for me: “the idea of Wayne Rooney”. So I’m left wondering why you express such offence at such a paean to this Rooney fellow? No doubt I am missing subtle esoteria and old grievances from these arcane worlds I am not part of……….
Could we use latter correctly, please?
Rooney was an excellent footballer but I think he peaked at too young an age. His first games for England were excellent and he frightened opposition defences, but he never seemed to progress from there. This is in contrast to Ronaldo who seemed to get better each year through his 20’s.