Wayne Rooney didn’t stay long at Birmingham City. After just 15 matches in charge, only two of which ended in victory, he was relieved of his duties as manager on Tuesday. Three months he had been the boss, just about enough time to learn the name of the tea lady. But then, nobody can be surprised by the swiftness of his departure. And among Birmingham’s supporters, there was considerable relief. Now, finally, the club could get a proper manager in.
Because the fact is, Rooney was all along a fantasy appointment, recruited on his name and celebrity, not his accumulated wisdom or tactical nous. For many it was always a laughable idea to put him in control of the club, one which really should lead to the defenestration of the man who made it, the CEO Garry Cook. But naturally, this being football, Cook stays in, apparently immune to the comedy value of his decision-making. And for Rooney, this might well prove to be the sacking which finishes his attempts to make a career as a manager almost before it has begun. Let’s just say, after the Birmingham debacle, the queue for his services will hardly be stretching around the block. And with that very public humiliation, the damage to his self-esteem and sense of purpose could prove substantial.
What a contrast it is to his time as a player when everything came easy to him. The most talented English footballer since Paul Gascoigne, from the start he played as if still on the streets of his Merseyside youth, his natural ebullience allied with a bullish refusal to yield allowing him to illuminate the pitch with breathtaking interventions. Next summer will mark the 20th anniversary of the moment he etched his name on the public consciousness, when at the 2004 Euros his extraordinary ability looked as if it might take England to their first trophy since 1966. Injury, however, intervened. And without his bravado, England proved to be an empty vessel.
