Wayne Rooney: My Decade in the Premier League (13 page)

It’s funny how my brain works when I’m on a football pitch. I think I know what’s coming next (
What number penalty am I going to be taking this time?
), when, all of a sudden, 116 minutes into the game, Didier Drogba scores and one half of Wembley goes mental; the other half gets deja vu. I can’t believe it, it’s like 2005 all over again. We’ve been sucker-punched.

There’s only a few minutes left, so we chuck everything at them, but this is a Mourinho team and they begin using every trick in the book to run the clock down and see out the game.

They fall over.

They take ages over throw-ins.

They roll around after tackles.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve pulled the same tricks to see out games. It’s all part of the job, but when we’re on the receiving end of it, it’s not nice.

I’ve promised myself that I’ll never cry on the football pitch, whether the emotion comes from winning a
Champions League trophy or losing the league. But as the final whistle goes I’m close to breaking down. I can feel the lump in my throat. My heart is pumping, my lungs are heavy. It’s bloody horrible.

Don’t cry
.

Hold it in
.

I’ve learned by now that if we don’t win the league, it’s not because of one game or one person, it’s because of the squad and all 38 matches on the fixture list. If we lose a cup final, it’s all on that one game. And losing to Chelsea in the final minutes of extra-time is just about the worst I’ve ever felt as a footballer.

I sit in Carlos Tevez’s car.

Carlos has only been at the club five minutes – he’s signed for us on loan from West Ham after they came close to relegation at the end of last season, but he virtually kept them up on his own. He’s that good a player. Now he’s at United for the beginning of the 2007/08 campaign and we’ve already hit up a pretty good understanding in pre-season training, both on and off the pitch.

Off it, we’re taking it in turns to give one another lifts. On it, we’re clicking, scoring goals, which I think will come as a bit of a surprise to some people because there’s been a lot of talk in the papers that we won’t work well together. The fans reckon we’re too similar, that we play in an
identical role, but judging by our work at Carrington, I don’t think there’s going to be a problem.

In practice games Carlos and I seem to have an understanding: I know where he’s going to run; he knows where I’m going to be whenever he has the ball. Sometimes that connection just happens in football. It’s like the pair of us are telepathic, like we’ve been playing together all our lives. It’s crazy, no one can explain why it happens with strikers but when it does click, the goals come easily.

It’s a good job we have that connection because Carlos doesn’t speak our lingo. Even though he’s been in the country a year, he hardly says a word of English, but I don’t think he’s a soft lad; I reckon he knows more than he’s letting on. My guess is that he can’t be arsed to talk in English. Still, he seems to understand me when I shout at him. Not like Basil Fawlty in
Fawlty Towers
, but when I’m yelling at him in a game, looking across at him angrily or applauding something that he’s done, Carlos can see exactly what it is that I want from him.

Luckily for Carlos, there are a few lads in the dressing room who speak his language and they seem happy to translate for him. Nani and Anderson have signed for a combined £30 million from Sporting and Porto respectively, and they can have a crack with him. Nani has only been learning English for a few weeks, but he helps Carlos with the basics. Anderson has been learning from his Xbox by the looks of things. We’ve been playing a computer war game called SOCOM (named after the US Special Operations Command) in the hotel on the nights before our pre-season friendlies.

For the first few weeks, Anderson hadn’t spoken a word of English, then in training he started shouting phrases from the game.

‘He’s killed me!’

‘He’s in the generator room!’

Anderson’s also the scruffiest bloke I know. He often arrives at training in a pair of shorts, his headphones on, and wearing flip flops. Everyone’s always giving him stick.

If those two aren’t around to help out Carlos then Patrice often steps in because he speaks just about every language going. The club translator has been giving him lessons and now he watches DVDs in English. If any of the foreign lads can’t understand what The Manager wants, they’ll usually nudge Patrice. He translates as best he can.

The other morning, while The Manager was trying to get his point across to Carlos and Nani, I thought about being in a place where I wasn’t able to communicate with the players around me. I couldn’t imagine not being able to understand everyone in the dressing room. If I had signed for a team abroad when I left Everton a few years back rather than United, I would have wanted to know exactly what the boss was saying at half-time. I’d have wanted to know what my teammates were talking about. It would have driven me mad if I’d been sitting there as the other lads talked to one another around me. They could have been slagging me off and I wouldn’t have known.

Because of Carlos and Anderson’s arrival there’s another addition to the dressing room: a weird Tardis-shaped pod. It looks like an upright sunbed but it won’t top up a Hollywood
tan because it’s designed to give the South American lads a boost of vitamin D. When someone’s used to playing in the sun and the heat of Argentina or Brazil all their lives, Manchester’s weather can be a bit of a shock, I suppose. This machine gives them all the vitamins they don’t get from the Carrington climate.

*****

We’re Premier League champions but we start the campaign like mid-table strugglers.

Manchester United 0 Reading 0

Portsmouth 1 Manchester United 1

Manchester City 1 Manchester United 0

I bust my foot against Reading; Ronaldo gets sent off against Portsmouth because the ref thinks he’s head-butted their midfielder, Richard Hughes. We both miss the defeat against City and the club slips into 17th spot; I don’t get off the treatment table for six weeks. It’s a bad start and the atmosphere around the training ground is gloomy.

From the stands I watch us as we get a result against Spurs at home. And then a crazy thing happens: Ronnie takes the season by the scruff of the neck. I can’t believe it, he’s been looking good for a couple of seasons now, but suddenly everything he touches turns to gold, even the highlights in his hair. It’s incredible to see him play. He batters defences and turns full-backs inside out; he scores goals
from mad angles. His pace is frightening and he wins us points in games when we look like getting nothing. He must be giving managers and defenders nightmares.

He bangs in goals against Birmingham, Wigan, Arsenal, Blackburn Rovers, Fulham, Derby, Everton, Sunderland, West Ham, a hat-trick against Newcastle in a 6–0 spanking; more goals against Reading, Portsmouth. He scores five goals in the group stages of the Champions League and we top our group as unbeaten winners above Roma, Sporting Lisbon and Dynamo Kiev. Managers can’t work out whether he’s playing as an out-and-out striker or as a winger. He leaves defences in bits, but the rest of us are pulling our weight, too. I return from injury and start scoring a lot of goals. And with myself, Ronnie, Tevez, Nani and Louis Saha (who’s struggling for fitness) we have the best strike force in the league, probably Europe.

As the season moves into the Christmas period, Ronnie is the difference, though. He looks good on making his promise of being the best player in the world.

I think:
Yeah, he’s the sharpest around
.

In training I can tell the lads are all thinking the same thing:
Bloody hell, don’t kick Ronnie too hard, we’re going to need him on Saturday
.

*****

As the season comes to an end, we’re nearly 20 goals better than Chelsea, which is worth a point. I’m scoring, Carlos is scoring. Ronaldo seems to get a goal in every game. He bangs in two against Newcastle (another battering, 5–1), two against Bolton (2–0), he also scores against Derby (1–0), Liverpool (3–0), Villa (4–0), Boro’ (2–2) and Arsenal (a 2–1 win). He’s developed this crazy technique for his free-kicks – he hits the ball off the laces of his boot and it swerves and spins and twists in the air so the keeper can’t quite suss which way it’s going to go. He scores from so many dead balls that I spend ages watching him practice in training, but I can’t work out quite how he does it. He seems to plant his standing foot alongside the ball so hard that it pops up slightly – which means he’s almost striking the ball on the volley. This technique gives him a dip in his shot, but even when I study him – kick after kick after kick – I can’t pull it off when I try the same trick.

Ronaldo’s form means that he’s now started playing upfront, while I’m on the wing. I don’t mind too much, anything for the team, but I’d rather play as a striker. On the
flanks I can’t express myself in a game in the way that I’d like (but I know I can be a match winner wherever I play) and I also have to work a lot harder (which I don’t mind). Playing on the wings is a lot different though. Legging it up and down the pitch for 90 minutes can be knackering.

The annoying thing is, Ronaldo can play on the flanks; it’s his role. But Ronnie’s the best player in the world at the moment and he’s a massive threat upfront. I don’t moan about it. I don’t go into The Manager’s office with a cob on. I never walk into training and say, ‘I’m not playing unless I play upfront.’ I just get on with things.

Then Ronnie scores a header against Roma in the Champions League quarter-finals that’s so good it could have been put away by Alan Shearer. We’re playing them at their place, the Stadio Olimpico – always an intimidating ground to go to – and with the score balanced at 0–0, Scholesy hangs a cross from the right-hand side of the box to the penalty spot. It doesn’t look like it’s aimed at anyone in particular at first, but then Ronaldo steams into the area having legged it from the halfway line. He jumps up, all the muscles in his neck straining as he thumps the ball past their goalie, Doni. It’s one of the best headers I’ve ever seen.

With the away goal, the whole team becomes pumped up with confidence. I stick the ball in the net when the goalie fumbles it and we win the game 2–0. Then Carlos scores for us in the 1–0 home leg victory to put us into the semis with Barça, probably the best team in the competition.

*****

The first leg takes place in the Nou Camp – a stadium I’d always dreamed of playing in. I’d been there as a lad when we went to the city on a school trip and I was blown away by the size of the ground as we walked around it in our uniforms, rucksacks over our shoulders. I couldn’t believe my luck when we bumped into the Barça goalie, Ruud Hesp, outside and we all got autographs. I thought:
How unbelievable must it be to play footy in here?

When I get inside for the first time with United I discover the enormity of the Nou Camp.

This place is unreal.

I can’t believe how high the stadium is, how big everything seems. The club have built a chapel in the tunnel for their players to pray in. When we get onto the grass for the first time, I see they’ve positioned speakers all around the pitch. Each one plays the noises from the crowd, so it’s extra loud for the teams when they’re on the pitch. It’s like being at a rock gig, the sound is so huge.

We’re not intimidated though, because we have another game plan. All week we’ve been working on how to break Barça down with our assistant coach, The Manager’s right-hand man, Carlos Queiroz. One afternoon at training, he placed mats down on the floor in the club gym. They were laid out in the shape he wanted us to be in when Barça had the ball. When he positioned Scholesy’s mat side by side with Michael Carrick’s in the central midfield position, I noticed there was nothing between them.

‘That’s the distance I want you to be together on the pitch,’ he said. ‘Don’t move too far apart, otherwise their midfielders will pick you off.’

The lads started looking at one another like he was mad, but we knew we could trust him. Tactically he’s been brilliant for us. He knows exactly how we should play and he always sets up the team to win games. He has experience, having worked with Real Madrid and South Africa; The Manager knows Carlos gives us an edge when we’re planning a game because he understands how to tactically win matches, especially when we’re playing away from home, like against Barça.