Rooney Returns Ready To Explode …
Does Wayne Rooney’s improved form signal a move out of Cristiano Ronaldo’s shadow at a defining moment in United’s season?
Notwithstanding his 23 strikes so far, Rooney is said to have enjoyed a mediocre season by his standards. Some standards!
Nevertheless, the striker is in high spirits and looking foward to the ‘cup finals’ ahead. “It’s the end of the season and I’m feeling good, feeling fit,” Rooney said. “Hopefully I can keep playing and scoring goals.”
Since returning from the World Cup, patently struggling after injury and disconsolate following his dismissal against Portugal, Rooney has watched Ronaldo soar into the limelight, his tricks, flicks, pace and goal threat carrying United’s banner in this magical season.
It was a neat reversal of roles and fortunes. It was Rooney’s calling to be United’s outstanding young player. It was Rooney who was widely considered to be the best young player in Europe when he became the toast of the 2004 Euro Championships. A hatrick on his Champions League and United debut that same year, merely confirmed United’s luck to have scooped a major talent. The £27 million that went to Everton seemed, even then, so much like a sure thing, for Rooney was incontestably head and shoulders above any player of his generation.
Few would be quite so unguarded in their judgement now. It is Rooney who is very much second banana to the flying Portuguese winger whom United would not trade for any price.
As the season unfolded with Ronaldo leading United’s charge, Rooney was becalmed. The strength, the determination and the constant chatter with referees and opponents remained but the brightness and invention of his play had withered.
As his form dipped, Rooney received the worst press of his career. ‘Rooney has not looked his usual self since returning from a three-game ban picked up in the pre-season,’ the Sun complained in the wake of the attacker’s subdued Champion’s League performance away to Benfica. “Boss Ferguson says he just needs games. Well, how many? Maybe he is allowed a blip. The thing is when you are Manchester United trying to win the Premiership and in Europe, he cannot afford one.”
Rooney confronted the criticism head on. “I am disappointed with my own form,” he confessed. “It has not been up to the standard I normally play. I am disappointed with that but I will keep working hard and hopefully my game will come back again.”
The prodigy struggling to impose himself in the manner of old became the football topic of the autumn. Rooney’s barren run in Europe – two and a half years without a goal – seemed barely believable, until his goal drought with England began to provoke, in some quarters , a reconsideration of the player’s gifts. Even Rooney’s indecision over his beard growth - giving him at once the look of medieval regent and millionaire tramp - seemed symbolic of a player in painful transition from boy to man, or so pop psychologists would have fans believe.
“Rooney has had something of an annus horribilis,” the Guardian’s Paul Wilson opined after United’s match against Reading last September. “The number of outstanding performances by Wayne Rooney this year can be counted on one hand. Newcastle, Arsenal, Tottenham last season perhaps, and Wigan in the Carling Cup final. Nothing over summer, and not too much to write about since. Of course he has been injured, and suspended, and Sven used him criminally in the World Cup but the bottom line as far as Wayne the Wonderkid goes is that the world is still waiting.”
Is the waiting now over? Rooney has found his goal touch in Europe, scoring against Roma and crucially against AC Milan. There is an enthusiasm to his play that augurs well for the matches ahead. The hot streak of goals – 7 netbusters in his last 10 league and cup games - together with excellent performances both as a lone frontman and as a support striker, reinforce the belief that the player is ready to fire United to glory.
“I think I’ve learnt from playing with good players around me and just playing Champions League football,” Rooney admitted. “I am settled and playing much better football.”
With Saha perplexingly absent, Solskjaer exhausted and Ronaldo carrying a slight injury, Sir Alex will look to his star attacker to help United to their first ever victory on Milanese soil.
“I think there is every chance we will concede in Italy,” the manager revealed. “But we have to score and we will be going out there with an attitude to score.”
In Rooney, the manager has an in-form player ready for the challenge. “I have dreamed of playing in and winning a Champions League final,” he said? “I want it more than anything. Before we can even think about that, we have to concentrate on Milan. We have to be disciplined and composed. Hopefully we can get the result we need.”
