By Luke Gardener
On 19th October Wayne Rooney’s representatives were saying that the pride of Manchester United and England was looking for a new club and would not sign a new contract with the Old Trafford outfit. Just three days later however news broke that Rooney had in fact signed a new five-year deal to keep him at the Red Devils until 2015. After a debacle which left the most experienced manager in the Premiership in Sir Alex Ferguson looking less than all-powerful for perhaps the first time in his career, have we now entered an age where footballers call the shots over their managers and chairman? If this is the case then the contracts professional footballers sign become meaningless, leaving us with the question of whether this is a new era for football, or a one-off scenario involving England’s number one footballer.
Rooney is one of the most talented strikers in the world and rumour has it he felt he deserved a more generous weekly wage in order to stay at Manchester United. Rooney made it extremely clear that he wanted to leave the club and apparently it took a conversation with Sir Alex Ferguson as well as a phone call with Joel Glazer about the future of the club to convince Rooney to sign a new five year contract. Rooney’s concerns revolved around United’s lack of transfer market activity in recent windows despite receiving a reported £80 million for the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid in 2009. Although we will never know the details of the phone conversation with United’s co-chairman, you have to believe the next transfer window or two will tell us a lot about why Rooney chose to make a shock U-turn so soon after announcing his intentions to move on.
The way Rooney handled his contract situation leaves a lot to be answered for as effectively holding one of the biggest clubs in the world to ransom, accusing his manager of telling a false story about an injury and implicitly branding his teammates as sub-standard will leave him in a vulnerable position with the loyal Manchester United fans. As well as this, Rooney will no doubt be accused of greed and by United choosing to hold onto their star asset the damage which has been done in this situation could be more than if Sir Alex Ferguson showed Rooney the door to a new club.
To most everyday hard working people the Rooney situation shows that football is a completely different world, where a contract means little and players are calling the shots more and more. With the recent news of Kevin Pietersen coming out in support of Rooney, are professional sportspeople oblivious to the damage which could be caused thanks to situations like this? Pietersen said: “He’s a genius and should be backed. It doesn’t help when people hammer you.” Not everyone in the world of sport holds the same view as the cricketer though. When asked about the Rooney story, Blackpool manager Ian Holloway was clearly outraged that a player could hold enough power to overcome a manager of Sir Alex Ferguson’s standing in the game.
Now we have entered the aftermath of the Wayne Rooney contract saga and it appears the striker will be out for up to three weeks with an ankle injury he denied that he had. Is this Sir Alex Ferguson reasserting his authority over the man he now has tied down for five more years or is there a genuine injury? One thing is for sure: with the recent form of Javier Hernandez, Rooney may not be missed as much as he could potentially be, presenting Ferguson with the perfect opportunity to teach Rooney and his whole squad a lesson of respect.
Rooney may be a footballing genius, but does that mean he can take a stand whenever he is unhappy with a situation that arises at Manchester United or indeed with England? If events like this become the norm, then the roles of managers and chairman effectively become defunct, and the world of football and professional sports will be entering a place where they may never recover in the eyes of the people who keep the world of sport alive: the fans. Whatever your opinion of the Wayne Rooney contract saga, it is certainly a sign that football is in a very delicate place at the moment, in which players, managers, agents and chairman are colliding more than ever before.