TOP 100 SOCCER SITES
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| De Rosario's comments "unacceptable": TFC exec Toronto FC says captain Dwayne De Rosario's weekend comments about deserving a better contract are disappointing and unacceptable. cbc.ca |
All is not lost for Wayne the celebrity Like David Beckham and George Best before him, Wayne Rooney must reconcile football's relationship with celebrityThe hardest-working person in the country at the moment must be Robbie Savage's agent. Closely followed by Savage himself, one might conclude, what with the necessity of showering quickly after Derby County games to take part in 606 phone-ins, a book just out, a newspaper column to pen and an attempt to set a new world record by popping up in every single punditry chair the television industry has to offer. Good luck with the Queen's award for industry, but it is still possible to suppose the agent is doing all the donkey work.Savage doesn't actually say much into any of his microphones, after all, including the ones that capture his thoughts for the printed page, and given his present ratio of ubiquity to insight it would not be difficult to imagine commissioning editors beginning to think that less might be more. So fair play to whoever is backing the Savage campaign for total media domination, banging on all the doors and making all the bookings. Only a cynic would suggest the need to grasp every available opportunity all at once betrays a suspicion that popularity may turn out to be short-lived.All these thoughts and some even less charitable ones occurred when ESPN brought together Savage and Kevin Keegan to discuss the Bolton Wanderers-Manchester United game with Ray Stubbs, and I must admit my first reaction was to reach for the remote. Yet perhaps ESPN knows something about chemistry that I don't, because the company appeared to bring the best out of Keegan.Normally a fairly neutral panel performer who usually manages to give the impression he would rather be doing something else, Keegan came up with an opinion on Wayne Rooney's tribulations that was not only forceful enough to make the following day's back pages but could end up marking a watershed in the United striker's career. (For the benefit of the half dozen or so people who don't know this already, Keegan said Rooney's confidence is shot, which is obvious, and that he could not turn off the celebrity tap when it suited him. Sell your wedding pictures to magazines, Keegan warned, and you put your family life into the public domain.)Perhaps it did not require Sherlock Holmes to make that connection, yet with a vivid awareness from his own playing days of the pressures a high-profile persona can bring, Keegan put his finger on an issue that will undoubtedly have been troubling Sir Alex Ferguson. Rooney is both a footballer and a celebrity, as most leading internationals are. But so was George Best, once, before the celebrity aspect of his life began to complicate his hitherto straightforward relationship with his core activity.David Beckham is arguably a bigger celebrity than he is a footballer at present, though it was not always so, and the transitional period began at Old Trafford, even if he was long gone by 2007, when Ferguson observed: "He is such a big celebrity now that football is only a small part of his life." And of course there was Cristiano Ronaldo, perhaps the best example of a mutually successful relationship between football and celebrity, unless you happened to be the club that wanted to hang on to him. Ronaldo outgrew United, and not many modern players can say that.Rooney is nothing like Ronaldo or Beckham, not even that much like Best, yet what the events of the last few weeks have shown is that he is not necessarily going to turn out like Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs or Gary Neville either. While it appeared in the first couple of years after his transfer from Everton that only injuries could possibly stop him from becoming the greatest footballer of his generation, now a few more complications have raised their head, and he is still only 24. That is not automatically a comfort to the club that first experienced problems with Best at the age of 25 and lost him completely when he was 27, though for purposes of comparison, Beckham was 23 when he returned in personal turmoil from the 1998 World Cup and received an arm round the shoulder from his manager. "Come back to Manchester and the people who love you," Ferguson said, while elsewhere in the country Beckham was experiencing hostility and abuse.The big difference between Beckham at 23 and Rooney at 24 is that the former had only put himself on the map a couple of years earlier, with his remarkable goal against Wimbledon embellishing his first full season. Beckham had been loaned to Preston North End as a relative unknown in 1994-95, the World Cup in France was his first, and in 1998 United's treble was still in the future. Rooney at just over a year older has played in two World Cups, lit up the European Championships in Portugal six years ago and won a Champions League medal at the age of 22. Like Best, who also won the European Cup at that age, he already seems to have a full career behind him, when in reality he could be looking at another 10 years at the top.There is no need to make gloomy forecasts about history repeating itself or Rooney being unable to recover from a dud World Cup and being upstaged by Dimitar Berbatov and then Michael Owen. All that has actually happened is that he has allowed other aspects of his life to interfere with his talent for playing football, discovering in the process that natural ability is not something that can be taken for granted. That doesn't happen to every footballer, even if United have seen off-field issues sideline careers before.Ferguson possibly never imagined it would happen to someone as uncomplicated and enthusiastic as Rooney but, as Keegan rightly pointed out, it just has. Nothing from here on can be as certain as it once was, and Rooney's entire career to date has been based on the certainty that he would make an exceptional footballer. What follows is terra incognita. Having worked out that Rooney was not going to play through his problems, much less be inspired by adversity, United were wise to give him some time to rest up and prepare.Wayne RooneyManchester UnitedPaul Wilsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Sam Allardyce says Danny Murphy wrong to call Blackburn Rovers a dirty team Sam Allardyce responds to Danny Murphy's claims Blackburn are dirty and points to fair play record to defend tactics. telegraph.co.uk |
Lowy worried by bid 'politics' Football Federation Australia chairman Frank Lowy fears bid "politics" could hurt Australia's chances of hosting the World Cup. foxsports.com.au |
Diving bans have gone too far Brisbane Roar coach Ange Postecoglou says A-League’s new tough stance on diving is taking away the sport's spectacle. foxsports.com.au |