on the screen it would always read: ‘Steve Bruce: Premier League Winner’, or ‘Teddy Sheringham: Treble Winner.’
I want that to be me.
Later, when I train at Carrington for the first time, Gary Neville gives me some advice. He says, ‘The thing with this team is, no matter how much you’ve achieved, no matter how many medals you’ve won, you’re never allowed to think that you’ve made it.’
I’m a bit nervous about meeting Gary Neville again. I’d whacked him during that reserve game after all – I worry that he’ll remember it. It doesn’t help that just before my arrival one of the papers runs a story about Gary hating Scousers. Apparently he’s told a reporter, ‘I can’t stand Liverpool, I can’t stand Liverpool people, I can’t stand anything about them.’ I’m a bit worried that me and him won’t get on.
I ask him whether he’s really said it, whether he really hates Scousers. He tells me it’s rubbish – he’d been chatting about the Liverpool side of the ’80s. He’d grown up watching them win trophy after trophy. He hated their team; he wasn’t having a pop at the people in the city, just the club. That’s good enough for me. As an Evertonian I can see his point.
I like Gary straightaway, he’s a funny lad. We warm up together in training by playing keep ball in one of the boxes marked out on the training ground turf. I spoon the ball and give a pass away. From behind me I hear him winding me up. ‘Flippin’ heck, how much did we pay for Wazza?’
At lunch after the practice game, he doesn’t stop talking, he goes on and on and on, but in a nice way. Sometimes when he’s off on one – about music, his guitar playing, football – it’s as if he doesn’t have the time to stop for breath, especially if he’s talking about United. He’s the most passionate player I’ve ever met. He’s hard too, on the pitch and off it. He gets stuck into tackles; in the dressing room I notice that The Manager has a go at Gaz probably more than any of the other players in the team because he can handle it. He isn’t soft like some footballers can be.
When he’s out there playing, he’s the spirit of The Manager. He carries that same ambition to win, that same desire. There’s one game where I sit on the bench with him and he even acts like The Manager. He watches the way our match unfolds and he studies the tactics of the opposition. Then with 20 minutes to go he sends a youth team player out to warm up on the touchlines for a laugh without The Manager knowing. Talk about cheek.
Gary and players like Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs bring a lot of experience to the dressing room. In my first few months at the club there are times when teams who can’t live with us on paper defend for their lives and nearly get away with it, even at Old Trafford. They hassle us and battle for every tackle; they park the team bus in front of their goal every time we win back possession. I get frustrated. I lose my patience and start hitting risky long balls and taking pot shots in a desperate attempt to win the game, but Gary calms me down.
‘Keep trying, Wazza, keep playing. A chance will come.’
Nine times out of ten, he’s right.
I’m not the only one to hear the advice. There’s a young lad called Ronaldo who signed a season earlier from Sporting Lisbon for a cool £12.2 million, and everyone starts talking about how he’s going to be the future of the club alongside me. There’s nothing on him though: he’s a bag of tricks, but he’s skinny. He’s got braces on his teeth, slicked hair and he’s spotty. Ronaldo looks like a boy. It’s hard to believe we’re around the same age.
Wonder how he’s going to turn out?
*****
As I get settled at the club, the size of United amazes me. I watch the news at home and no matter where the cameras are, the Middle East, somewhere in Africa, wherever, there’s always a little kid wearing an old United shirt. At first it freaks me out, but then fame always has done.
The first time I’d heard that fans were going into the Everton club shop for my shirt, it felt weird. It used to confuse me when people wanted my autograph in the street. I was 14 when it happened for the first time, playing a youth team game for Everton. When the final whistle went, a bloke came up to me and asked for my signature.
‘I’m going to keep this because when you grow up it’s going to be worth a lot of money,’ he says.
Seeing myself on the box was even weirder.
I played in both legs of the FA Youth Cup final in 2002 against Aston Villa and picked up the Man of the Match award afterwards, even though we lost. Sky interviewed me for the show after one game and I watched it back when I got home because my mum had videoed it. I hated it when I saw the clip: it didn’t look like me, it didn’t sound like me. It was weird.
At United I realise straightaway that the attention is much more intense and the players are treated like rock stars. It’s scary because the team has fans everywhere and people recognise me wherever I go. In the street, blokes, mums and kids come up to me for autographs, and most of the time I’m comfortable with it, but there are moments when it gets too much. I’m only 18 years old; it’s difficult to deal with the attention sometimes.
Every time I go shopping I see a picture of myself in the papers the next day; one night I go out for a meal and people point and stare when I’m sitting with my family. It’s like I’m a waxwork from Madame Tussauds rather than a person. A party of people starts telling the family on the next table that ‘it’s that Wayne Rooney over there’. Then they start pointing and taking pictures with their phones on the sly. In the shops I’m happy to sign stuff, pose for photos and talk to people, but it’s a bit much when I’m eating my tea.
I decide I’m not going to bang on about fame to my mates or moan about it to the lads at the club though, because that’s what so many other footballers do. Signing for United means I have to deal with this situation. It’s part of my job, but I realise I’m growing up fast. I’m learning how to live my life under a mad spotlight.
One afternoon, shortly after the Fenerbahçe game, I go to the garage to fill the car up. As I put the petrol in, a bloke pulls up next to me and winds his window down.
‘Here, Wayne, you fill up your own car yourself, do you?’
Like anyone else is going to do it.
The Manager’s office is right in the thick of things at Carrington, United’s training ground, upstairs from the changing rooms, next to the canteen. If someone was to wander into the club at lunch on a Monday without checking the footy results first, they’d know exactly how United have got on just by taking a look at The Manager’s body language. As he buzzes around the dining tables at lunch, having a crack with people, chatting, joking (or not chatting, not joking), it’s written all over his face.
If we’ve won, like against Fenerbahçe, he laughs with everyone; he talks about the last game and gets excited about the next. If we’ve been playing really well, he tells unfunny jokes and shouts out silly trivia questions while we eat our lunch or get changed.
‘Lads, name the current players from the Premier League with a World Cup winners’ medal?’ he says.
He keeps us guessing for ages. I don’t think he actually knows the answers half the time. If he does, he never gives them to us when we pester him afterwards.
When he’s in a really good mood, the stories start. He goes on about his playing career and the goals he scored as a striker for Dunfermline and Rangers. He tells the tale about the time he once played with a broken back. Apparently everyone in the squad’s heard it – how bad the pain was, how he got the injury. The Manager tells the ‘Broke Back’ tale so many times that it’s not long before I know it from beginning to end. But it doesn’t stop him from telling it again, especially when he feels there’s a point to be made about injuries. The funny thing is, even though