Natural born thriller

Six years earlier, Owen had been the 18-year-old who scored a goal at the World Cup finals that remains, for all of us, a cherished memory. Who would have thought then, in the minutes and hours after the kid slalomed a passage through the Argentine defence and rifled his shot into the top corner, that one day he would need another kid to tell us he wasn’t such a bad player? But let not the future cloud the present. Not yet, anyway. There is something to celebrate here. For how can it be possible for a teenager, a shy, self- conscious lad with little experience of life beyond Liverpool, to move so imperiously across the stage of the world’s greatest game? How can a kid who was cycling to training only the other day be so at ease among the Zidanes, the Henrys, the Van Nistelrooys, the Figos? There is no explanation, no way of examining the physiology, the psychology or even the genealogy and coming up with an answer. What is the hallmark of star quality if not its indefinability? We know not from where it comes, but we recognise it instantly. Hey, did you see that? Rooney has it.

If you’re a football fan, you remember where you first saw it. An October afternoon at Goodison Park, home of his club, Everton: they were playing Arsenal, who were then on an unbeaten run. He was four days short of his 17th birthday and bearing down on goal. What would he do? What could he do? The shot from 25 yards was struck with the purity of a Tiger Woods 4-iron or a Jonny Wilkinson penalty goal. It flew like a missile, dipping, zeroing in on its target, skidding off the underside of the crossbar, shaking the net, sending tremors through the game of football.

Arsène Wenger regained his balance quickly and declared Rooney to be “the best young talent I have seen in this country since I came six years ago”. At the time, it seemed exaggerated praise; now it is an understatement. Six months later, Rooney made his competitive debut for England, thrown at 17 into the cauldron of a European Championship tie against Turkey at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light.

Were you there? Did you see how he bestrode the pitch like a master with 70 or more caps in his cabinet? He played up front alongside Owen but instinctively knew how to make himself most useful. So he often dropped back into the midfield, where he picked the ball up and teased the defence with his penetrative running.

Once, memorably, he juggled the ball on his right foot, as an older boy might do when toying with his juniors. But this wasn’t for show; it was a means of protecting the ball from the enemy and, at the end, he swept a fine pass far to his right to Steven Gerrard. Did you see what he just did? Against the Turks that April, there was that and so much more.

Having already unnerved them, he set off on a run towards the Turkish goal, powering past a couple of defenders. Just when you thought he was going to shoot, he slipped the neatest pass to Owen. The kid showed an intelligence and a sense of teamwork that was remarkable in one so young.

That evening he played with the tactical know-how of Teddy Sheringham, who was easily the brightest, most aware English forward of his generation. How could he know what it had taken Sheringham years to refine? He is not as clever as Sheringham, but his instincts are so sharp that even without thinking, he can often do the clever thing.

The moments of brilliance have always been there. That disguised pass to Owen at the Stadium of Light would not have surprised Everton fans. On his first-team debut for the club, he made an opening, shaped to shoot and then rolled a sideways pass to Mark Pembridge, who did score.

Wherever you first saw him, that’s what you’ll remember. Think of a pitch in Manchester almost 10 years ago: the under-10s of United playing their Everton counterparts. A chain of expectant parents, mostly of United boys, rings the pitch, hardly noticing the lads in blue. And then one of them tries an outrageous overhead kick that flies like a torpedo into the net. On the sideline, Wayne Rooney’s dad starts to clap, and soon every parent, guardian and coach, red and blue, joins in.

Ray Hall is a coach at Everton. He remembers the talk about this boy, the expectation, at once intoxicating and scary, and the need to have him on his books: “You get an experienced scout sitting there with his cup of tea quivering while you’re talking to the lad and you know he’s a special talent.”

Walter Smith was manager at Everton at the time when the boy seemed ready for the man’s world. Rooney was 15 going on 16, and before making a decision about putting him in the first team, Everton first checked whether child protection laws allowed them to have a 15-year-old change in the same dressing room as adults. From a protection agency came the word that he could not be selected for Everton’s first team while still at school. He was that good, that young.

Now the name Rooney is in every football conversation. Or “Roon-eee, Roon-eee” as the fans have chanted through the team’s opening two games in the tournament. Coming from Liverpool and Lincoln, Manchester and Macclesfield, Chelsea and Carlisle, and carrying the baggage of their club allegiances, England’s fans don’t normally sing the praises of an individual. But this story has little to do with normality.

There he was on Thursday evening, ambling back into the dressing room, feeling okay about his day’s work. Most of the other players had got there before him. They applauded when he arrived. Hail the kid! Footballers don’t normally praise the young, for they know how easily a kid’s head can be turned. With him, they can’t be bothered to keep up pretences.

How will he cope with the roar of the crowd, the applause of his teammates and the countless people who, to win his favour, will fill his head with a sense of unlimited entitlement? “He gets that, so you’re entitled to more.” “Why shouldn’t you drive a big car, you can afford it?” In no sea are the sharks more dangerous, in no world are the temptations as plentiful.

The omens are not as bad as might be imagined. Everton’s excellent manager, David Moyes, has treated Rooney like his own son, and though the counselling and the cautions have sometimes been resented, they were for the boy’s good. Moyes eased him gradually into first-team football and tried to shield him from the limelight. Such sheltering, of course, adds to the fascination. The battle was unwinnable.

“You try not to build him up,” said his Everton team-mate, David Unsworth, “but you have no choice. This kid’s going to be a legend.”

Moyes’s intentions were worthy and stemmed from a belief that Rooney should not be denied his teenage years. Not only that, Moyes empathised with a kid he loved working with. He fed off Rooney’s desire to learn and the keenness to make himself a better player. His early training at Everton began at five in the afternoon. As soon as he arrived home from school, he was on his bike and at the training ground an hour or more before the session began. He would practise on his own until company arrived.

Enthusiasm alone will not protect him. But there are other qualities. On Thursday evening they brought him to the press conference to receive his man-of-the-match trophy. Someone asked him about the two goals. He said the first was a header he couldn’t miss, the other was just a shot that went in. Pressed to accept credit for the technical excellence of the shot that brought the second goal, he resisted.

“Nah,” he said, “I just hit it as hard as I could, it hit the post, then hit the goalkeeper and lucky for us, it was a goal.”

In this over-hyped world, understatement will serve him well. Asked how he would celebrate the day Blackburn Rovers won the Premiership title, Shearer said he would creosote the garden fence. Shearer endured because enough was never enough. And there are hints of the former England centre-forward in Rooney’s magnificent ruthlessness in front of goal. There are traces, too, of Paul Gascoigne in his ability to retain possession and play the right pass.

The merest mention of the gifted Gascoigne raises again the issue of how Rooney will cope with the adulation and the weight of unlimited wealth. So far, so good. His friendship with Gerrard, his fellow Liverpudlian, is encouraging, for it suggests that Rooney is comfortable with the down-to-earth and sensible Gerrard. “The best advice I can give Wayne is that you don’t just get judged on your football; it’s how you behave on and off the pitch.”

Gerrard was once seen late at night with a drink in his hand, three nights before an England game. He was publicly castigated. Rooney was asked about that. “I’m a young lad and I will want to go out sometimes. But I’ll go out a week before a game, not three or four days.” Maybe he will stick to that, maybe not, but it is encouraging that he recognises the need.

He says little, but it is mostly the stuff of common sense. “Compliments are fine,” he says matter-of-factly, “but you shouldn’t believe everything you are told.” His parents, Wayne and Jeanette, and his family are hugely supportive. His club have protected him and his management company, ProActive, take care of the commercial side. They can protect him from the outside world, but not from himself. But this is something the young player already recognises.

“Obviously, everyone else helps me along, but I’ve got to do it myself. If I can’t, there’s no point in them even trying.”

There are hurdles to clear, falls to take, recoveries that will have to be made. On the pitch, he has the swagger and the anger of youth. In England’s opening two matches, the referees indulged him; he got one yellow card, he could have had three. Opposition defenders have not set out to wind him up, but that will happen soon. Maybe against the Croatians in Lisbon tomorrow evening.

When he reacts rashly, as surely he will, do not judge him harshly, for it is only through his mistakes that he will learn. There will also be losses of form, serious injury, and it is then that we shall learn about his character. The greatness in Shearer, in Roy Keane, was most apparent in the months of rehabilitation from major knee surgery. Will Rooney show the same willpower? Last season with Everton, he did not perform especially well. Part of the explanation was that he returned from his summer break very overweight and spent too much of the early season regaining his fitness and then his sharpness. To do that once was careless, to do it twice would be downright unprofessional. Nobody ever said this would be easy.

But it is football he wants, not adulation; success, not celebrity, and that attitude will protect him. He has already paid his passage on this trip to the European Championships and he has given more than anyone expected. From his under-10 coach to David Moyes, from Sven-Göran Eriksson to Arsène Wenger, everyone said he was destined for the top. The surprise, even the shock, has been in how quickly he has arrived.