SOCCER:WHEN MANCHESTER United sent in the heavy mob on Thursday to dissuade Wayne Rooney from leaving they noticed a crack in his determination to join Manchester City. Rooney had been shocked by the anger his dismissive comments about the club's lack of "ambition" had aroused among his United team-mates.
Buckling under the strain, Rooney needed friends but the United players turned their backs. They would not forgive their colleague’s insult in suggesting their side had slipped into mediocrity. More money from the Glazers and a failure of nerve at Rooney’s end produced the sweetness-and-light statement confirming his signature on a new five-year deal at Old Trafford.
But the resentments felt by work-mates and supporters will not be easily erased by the most spectacular U-turn in the history of modern transfer sagas.
As Alex Ferguson and David Gill, the chief executive, bore down on Paul Stretford, Rooney’s agent, in a meeting at Old Trafford, an unconditional apology was a precondition of England’s leading player remaining at the club. United were at once pleading with Rooney to stay and playing hardball with the terms on which he might do so. Later that day, 40 men in balaclavas gathered outside the player’s Cheshire mansion to warn him of the dire consequences should he defect across town.
“Wayne has apologised to me and the players,” Ferguson told a local radio station when the volte-face was completed. “He will also do so with the supporters.”
This, after United fans had unfurled banners at the midweek Champions League game against Bursaspor calling Rooney a “whore” and promising: “Colleen forgave you, we won’t”. Short of planting a new forest in Cheshire to compensate for all the newsprint he wasted, Rooney must identify a strategy to regain the trust of team-mates and fans who will now see his alarming slump, retrospectively, as proof of self-indulgence.
His problem is that his recent feeble form has come to look like part of a strategy to get away from a club he accused in a statement two hours before the Bursaspor game of failing to match his own grand vision for talent acquisition.
By implication, Rooney was saying some of the recent recruits to Ferguson’s squad were not fit to share his air space. This, in professional team sports, remains a complete no-no.
Even if the senior players forgive him, Chris Smalling, Javier Hernandez, Bebe, Gabriel Obertan, Anderson and even Antonio Valencia are unlikely to forget the affront. They will feel Rooney’s condescension throughout their time together. They have seen him issue ludicrous statements first justifying his desire to flee and then expressing his fidelity to the cause, all of which is at odds with his reputation for straight-talking and dependability.
They will see, in other words, a creature of manipulation and self-contradiction: one they will feel they can rely on less. There is also the problem of his rocketing salary, which will eclipse theirs. Some will think Rooney has extorted an unrealistic wage with his brinkmanship and damaged the club along the way.
Rooney, himself, has a complication. If he returns to last season’s rampant form (pre-March, at any rate) colleagues and supporters will take it as incontrovertible proof that he has been half-hearted since August. Conversely, a continuation of the droop would say United have broken the bank for a 24-year-old who has already peaked and may even be in decline.
Part of United’s strategy on Thursday was to persuade him he was about to make an appalling error. Fans and players will probably feel he already has, with his disrespect.
FAMOUS U-TURNS
Steven Gerrard: Decided to stay with Liverpool in 2005 – less than 24 hours after revealing he wanted to leave.
Alex Ferguson: Announced in 2000 he would step down as United manager in May 2002. Still no sign of him going.
Ron Atkinson: Two days after saying he had the best job in the world managing Sheffield Wednesday, and had no intentions of leaving, he took over as manager of Aston Villa.
