The Premier League 60: No 9, Wayne Rooney

Publish date: 2024-08-08

Running each day until the new season begins, The Premier League 60 is designed to reflect and honour the greatest players to have graced and illuminated the English top flight in the modern era, as voted for by our writers.

You might not agree with their choices, you won’t agree with the order (they didn’t), but we hope you’ll enjoy their stories. You can read Oliver Kay’s introduction to the series here.

So, what was it like playing a key role in one of the more spectacular goals ever witnessed in England’s top division?

Not so great, actually, if you can try to put yourself in Peter Ramage’s boots and think back to that April afternoon in 2005 when the Newcastle United defender made his Premier League debut at Old Trafford, home to Manchester United.

Ramage was 21 at the time, a product of Newcastle’s youth academy, and his team were leading with nearly an hour gone. There were signs that Sir Alex Ferguson’s team were getting irritated when the ball was floated towards the edge of Newcastle’s penalty area and Ramage jumped to head it out.

“It was just a routine long ball,” he tells The Athletic. “But I headed it back into the middle of the field, which was a cardinal sin for a defender. I should have aimed it somewhere else. And, unfortunately for me, it fell to the one person I didn’t want it to fall to.”

"An astonishing moment from a true footballing genius!"#GoalOfTheDay is a volley for the ages from @WayneRooney… 💥 pic.twitter.com/LfKqUPP3h0

— Premier League (@premierleague) September 29, 2016

Even then, it shouldn’t have been critical. Ramage had made a decent connection. The ball was dropping almost 30 yards from goal and Newcastle had lots of players back.

Except the player wearing Manchester United’s No 8 shirt had fires smouldering behind his eyes. Something had got under his skin: the assassin-faced baby, 19 years old, raging at a perceived injustice. And that was the precise moment when all that pent-up anger and frustration was taken out on the ball.

It was so pure. The shot was still picking up speed as it flew into the top corner of Shay Given’s net. A series of different noises: leather on leather, the zip of ball hitting net, and then the crowd’s roar as the goalscorer… seethed.

One of the greatest goals that has ever been scored at Old Trafford and the man responsible for it — because Rooney was very much a man at 19 — still couldn’t get rid of all the anger that had been coursing through his veins

“Even when it went in, he kept running to hit the rebound in,” Given says now, 15 years on. “You could see he was still angry.”

Wayne Rooney won the Premier League five times, to go with one Champions League victory, one FA Cup, three League Cups, the Europa League and the FIFA Club World Cup. He is the highest scorer in the history of England’s national team. He also happens to be Manchester United’s record all-time scorer and, among all his personal accolades, was voted three times into the Professional Footballers’ Association team of the year.

It is true, if we are going to be picky, that he went into decline too early and could perhaps have looked after himself better off the pitch.

Yet Rooney’s achievements still warrant a certain type of recognition. There is a difference between being a great footballer and a footballing great and maybe, in time, it will be possible to declare that Rooney bridged the gap without any counter-argument about what he could have done differently.

There were some pretty sweet moments for Everton, too, particularly the last-minute winner against Arsenal with which the 16-year-old Rooney announced himself as a superstar-in-the-making.

For United, there was the bicycle-kick goal in the 2011 Manchester derby, the 45-yard up-and-under against West Ham, the free kick at Stoke that took him to a record 250 goals and a long list of other spectacular moments.

Yet nothing perhaps summed up Rooney more than that volley against Newcastle in front of the Stretford End. The power and precision that went into it. But also his psyche. What drove him to striking the ball with so much venom? What was it inside him that meant he was still wearing a grimace even while Old Trafford celebrated a goal of rare brilliance?

Wayne Rooney + halfway line = 😍 pic.twitter.com/engAm2ahyT

— Premier League (@premierleague) June 27, 2019

“Looking back, it’s funny because he was arguing with everyone,” Given says. “He was arguing with the referee about some decision he didn’t get. The ball has gone up in the air; I think it was Ramage who headed it, wasn’t it? He (Rooney) has literally run on to it and you know the rest.

“It wasn’t a chance to most players: a high ball dropping out of the sky, 25 yards out, on the volley. Most players would take it down, take a touch. They wouldn’t even attempt to shoot. That’s rare — that’s just raw talent, the natural ability that some people have. ‘I’m gonna fucking hit this’.”

Over the years, we have seen that look on Rooney’s face a few times.

In this case, he has always said he was annoyed because he thought the referee, Neale Barry, had been too lenient on Alan Shearer and let the Newcastle striker commit at least three fouls.

“I was arguing with the ref about it, saying, ‘If that was me, you’d be booking me’,” he explained in the 2011 documentary Rooney: Goal Machine.

Ferguson was interviewed for the same documentary. “I think he still had the anger of not getting a decision (from the referee),” the manager said. “And he just lashed at the ball and it exploded into the net. It was an incredible hit.”

But there was more to it than that.

Rooney had suffered a dead leg a few minutes earlier and needed lengthy treatment on the pitch. Kleberson, one of United’s substitutes, had started warming up and Rooney knew the electronic board was about to flash up his number.

In the television gantry, the Sky Sports commentator Ian Darke thought the same: “Wayne Rooney might be coming off for Manchester United.”

Rooney’s day was not going as he had expected. And, more than anything, it was difficult to overstate how much it meant to Rooney to win — and how much, in turn, he despised losing.

“Still, to this day, I don’t even know why Shay dived,” Ramage says. “He might as well have just stood there, admired the shot and watched it go in, because I don’t think having two or three goalkeepers would have been able to save that volley.”

Given is now the goalkeeping coach at Derby County, which makes him a colleague of Rooney, and they sometimes drive in together from where they live in Cheshire.

The former Republic of Ireland international can laugh about it now — and also that he was in goal for Newcastle on the day, in 2002, when Arsenal’s Dennis Bergkamp scored what was possibly the most implausibly brilliant goal of the Premier League era.

“I’ve seen it (Rooney’s volley) about a million times — not that I’ve been seeking to watch it back,” Given says. “When Sky used it for one of their adverts for the Premier League, I thought, ‘Here we go again’.

“It was a spectacular goal, one of the best Wayne ever scored. I watched Match of the Day that night and people were texting me, ‘What about that for a goal? Blah, blah’. Somebody said I was waving to the crowd. ‘Oh, yeah, great,’ I thought. But, nah, that goal speaks for itself.

“I knew him over the years but a lot better now. When he joined Derby, the social media team said: ‘Welcome to Derby, you’ll know one of our staff already’ and they showed the goal again! I don’t need to be reminded.”

Nor does Ramage as he reflects on one of the more bittersweet days of his professional life.

“When everybody talks to me about my career, they always reference that goal,” Ramage, now the assistant coach of Newcastle’s under-23s, says. “The day was surreal for me; to be making my Premier League debut at the Theatre of Dreams and then for it to be my header that Wayne volleyed in for one of the most talked-about goals in history. While Shay never hears the end of it, neither do I.

“But I don’t roll my eyes when it comes on TV. I love watching his technique. It’s one of the great strikes in Premier League history, from one of the great players, a player who was synonymous with great goals. Just think about his volley against West Ham from just inside his half. Or the ball he played for Robin van Persie (against Aston Villa in 2013) for his famous volley. Wayne Rooney has been involved in some of the greatest goals in history.”

Rooney actually prefers the overhead kick against Manchester City because of the importance of that fixture and, if it were to be put to a vote, perhaps the one against Newcastle might have to settle with the runner-up spot.

Don’t forget, however, that he was still a teenager at the time, playing in his first season at Old Trafford.

“It was one of those goals when you look back and think, ‘Whoa’,” Rio Ferdinand, Rooney’s former United team-mate says. “It epitomised what Wazza was all about. The ball just drops out of the sky and bang — back of the net.”

For the record, Kleberson did come on. But the number on the electronic board was changed and it was Darren Fletcher, not Rooney, who was taken off. Wes Brown’s 75th-minute goal completed the comeback to win the game for the home team. Yet these details feel almost inconsequential now compared to Rooney’s tour de force.

“People always tell me that, out of 100 of those volleys, there is probably only one when the striker hits it perfectly and scores,” Ramage says. “Unfortunately for me, I think Wayne Rooney was the only person on the planet who could have hit more than one.”

Additional reporting: Michael Walker

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The Premier League 60: No 9, Wayne Rooney