Rooney's Gold

Everyone has a theory about why England crashed so dismally out of the World Cup last weekend. The players were too old, or too tired or just not good enough; the 4-4-2 formation was too rigid against Germany s more fluid 4-2-3-1; they d have won if only Lampard s goal had been allowed. … The investigative journalist John Sweeney has a simple explanation for England s failure that s no explanation at all: The England football team has some of the finest and most expensive players in the world. There is only one problem. They fall to pieces when they leave this green and pleasant land and go somewhere, anywhere, called Abroad… Perhaps it s something to do with the water. Since Rooney s Gold, in which this assessment appears, was written before the World Cup began, Sweeney is at least one of those who can console themselves by saying I told you so . Wayne Rooney is perhaps the best example of an English player who has been outstanding for his club and disappointing for his country. In the 2009-10 season at Manchester United, Rooney scored 34 goals in 44 appearances and was chosen as both the Players Player of the Year and the Football Writers Association Player of the Year. No other England player is as renowned internationally. But in South Africa he barely made any impression, and has now played eight games in a row in an England shirt without scoring a goal. Sweeney documents all the major events, on and off the pitch, from Rooney s short life so far: his humble origins in the Liverpool suburb of Croxteth, otherwise famous for its gang violence, where his father, Big Wayne , an ex-boxer, earned £120 a week as a labourer and little Wayne dreamt of playing for Everton; the goal he scored for Everton against Arsenal five days before his 17th birthday; the £25 million transfer to Manchester United when he was 18; the dalliances with prostitutes, including, allegedly, though it was never proven, a grandmother; the red card for stamping on Ricardo Carvalho s testicles during England s defeat to Portugal in the 2006 World Cup quarter-finals; the multimillion-pound wedding in Italy to childhood sweetheart Coleen McLoughlin, with the pictures in OK!; the twisted ankle in the Champions League quarter final against Bayern Munich this year, which may or may not have had something to do with his lacklustre World Cup performance. One of the problems with writing a biography of a 24-year-old, especially one who s learnt the hard way to be as media-shy as Rooney has, is that there isn t always a lot of material to go on. Sweeney has two ways of dealing with this. One is to expand his account with digressions on such subjects as the nature of genius and whether or not Dr Johnson was autistic. The other is to follow the money (the gold of the title), and this pays dividends, as Sweeney explores the murkier side of professional football generally, including unscrupulous agents, publicists, gangsters and blackmailers not to mention the biggest villains of the piece, tabloid journalists all of whom have wanted a slice of the pie. Rooney was one of only four players under the age of 25 in England s 23-man World Cup squad. Since their defeat, there s been a lot of talk about the country s failure to nu –Thoma –Mark Irwin, The Sun

As top investigative journalist John Sweeney sets out in his book ‘Rooney’s Gold’, the fight for access to the England star’s bank balance reads more like an underworld crime thriller than a sports biography. –Mark Irwin, The Sun