Wayne Rooney at 40: Where does the time go?

Like many others, I can remember vividly where I was the moment Wayne Rooney announced his arrival as a Premier League player. 

A sunny autumnal October afternoon. The champions in town. A record unbeaten run ended. The birth of a brilliant footballer.

Not fortunate enough to witness it live, instead that moment was soundtracked by moans from my uninterested gran as I split the television screen between some dross drama and Ceefax score updates. 

Ways to consume the Premier League have come a long way.

Over at Goodison Park, Tomasz Radzinski had cancelled out Freddie Ljungberg's opener for Arsenal, and a point seemed a good result for Everton as the clock ticked towards full-time. 

Unbeknownst to the impressionable nine-year-old staring blankly at a television screen, eagerly awaiting score updates, David Moyes has thrust his teenage trump card into the action. 

Then it appeared. Rooney 90’. 

Rooney? 

A childhood football knowledge that spanned little more than FIFA games, Merlin sticker books, and Premier League big hitters needed to know more. The radio talk on the drive home centred around a 16-year-old sensation. Barely out of school. Sinking Arsenal.

It wasn’t just any goal, either. A hopeful hoof from Thomas Gravesen was brought down with velvet softness. As Arsenal retreated, Rooney took aim. The teenager could have been forgiven for putting his laces through it but instead, he went for precision. David Seaman, fresh from an error for England against Macedonia, could get nowhere near it.

In the days that followed, hours were spent trying to repeat Rooney’s golden goal. A ball thrown onto the house roof to imitate the sky-high drop of Gravesen’s lump, a garden chair placed on the lawn to represent some kind of four-legged miniature Sol Campbell. 

With each repetition, the imaginary voice of Clive Tydsley accompanied it. “Rooney. Instant control. Fancies his chances…”

See, as a nine-year-old, you watch a moment like that and still have the innocent belief it could one day be you. It remained even a little later, as Rooney rag-dolled senior stars at Euro 2024 in an England shirt.

It’s only as the years pass that you realise there was nothing normal about Rooney at all. This was a one-in-a-generation footballer, birthed in blue, remarkable, regrettably, in red.

Today marks the 40th birthday of that once untouchable teenage tyro. 

Just where does the time go?

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