Manchester United; Rooney’s Legacy

Wayne Rooney’s testimonial match provided a reported £5million for his chosen charities. However for everyone looking to the upcoming season it answered very few questions… But raised many for Manchester United fans.

Wayne Rooney has had a decorated career with Manchester United since joining from Everton 12 long years ago at the tender age of 18. No true Red Devils Fan will ever forget his debut against Fenerbahce in September 2004 scoring a hat trick, including that glorious free kick and installing hope and belief in being Manchester United’s 4^th most expensive player.

Wayne deservedly won the PFA young player of the year that season, having amassed a very impressive 17 goals in 43 appearances. In Rooney’s second season he won his first medal in a Manchester United shirt effectively leading the team to a League Cup title. He added to his tally from the previous year scoring 19 goals in 48 appearances while once again winning the PFA young player of the year award and ( Let’s be honest) much more important ‘Sir Matt Busby Fans Award’.

Since those early days Rooney has gone from strength to strength embroiling himself in the clubs culture and folklore despite some notably questionable decisions regarding his urges to leave the club while still under the management and tutelage of Sir Alex Ferguson. 2010 being the first and 2013 being the last reported; http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/m/man_utd/9104392.stm

Wayne Rooney handled this very public controversy extremely well and remains a fan favorite and has since been named the club captain in 2014. To be fair he has always dealt with controversy pretty well beginning at the age of 19 after being caught in a brothel with an aging call girl who became known as “The auld slapper”. He brushed that off and got back to business on the pitch making us all forget faster than we forgave Giggsy for allegedly ploughing his brother’s wife for years!

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Then came the hair implants at the age of 25 which Rooney initially tried to hide but upon being photographed entering Harley street hair clinic quite plainly tweeted “I’m 25, I’m rich, why not?”

So basically the Manchester United captain has lived through every level of emotion while representing the famous red, white and black of the biggest club in the world; He deserves the respect of the fans, he deserves the love, adoration and eventual, unavoidable and misplaced criticism of the fans and above all he deserved this testimonial against the club that brought him to the public’s eye… What Wayne Rooney did not deserve, was THIS testimonial match against his boyhood club.

A pre season game less than 2 weeks before the season begins is rarely a boring affair, but Jose Mourinho seemed to put some serious work into accomplishing just that;

As expected the budding partnership of Rooney and Ibrahimovic was the new Manchester United boss’s choice of starters; Lord knows 30 mins of a half decent performance against Galatasaray is nowhere near enough evidence that this partnership of a club legend and an aging former superstar is better than the academy trained youngsters lying in waiting, but I digress.

There was at least some positive link up play, the 25^th minute seen Rooney slip a picture perfect through pass to the feet of Zlatan which was well saved by Maarten Stekelenburg. Rooney later played a looping cross which was admittedly well controlled by the new Manchester United number 9 and then poorly finished and saved again by Everton’s starting goalkeeper.

Jose Mourinho made 6 changes at the half but left the fledgling front line on the field proving that this will indeed be his choice for the community shield next Sunday. However eight minutes into the 2^nd half the star of the show; Wayne Rooney himself was substituted for the home-grown Marcus Rashford.