I watch the telly. It’s boring. I sit. I’m fidgety. I stand. I pace around the room, listening to tunes on my iPod. This is a nightmare.” This is how Wayne Rooney, in his book My Decade in the Premier League, describes how he felt a few hours before the biggest match of his life — the 2008 Champions League final between Manchester United and Chelsea. Sure, no one goes looking for purple prose in a book by a footballer but what one does expect is a certain insight into his life. Does Rooney’s book provide you with either? The answer is a resounding no.
My Decade in the Premier League, as the name suggests, is about Rooney’s rise and rise from a prodigiously talented teenager playing at Everton to a world-class player at Manchester United, arguably the biggest football club in the world. Without even reading the book, the idea itself doesn’t appeal too much. Rooney has won four Premier League titles, one Champions League, a few other trophies and scored some spectacular goals along the way. Forget about reading and think for a moment: Is that a good enough story to be told?
The book has been written by Rooney along with Matt Allen, a British journalist, and chronicles how Rooney signed on with Manchester United and painstakingly describes the highs and lows of his career. When I say painstakingly, I mean it because after almost every third paragraph there is something like a thought bubble which follows in italics. For example, this is how he describes taking a penalty shot soon after he had missed one in an earlier match. “‘I look at the ball.’ Forget Arsenal. ‘I look straight at the keeper.’ Remember Rangers. Remember West Ham.” Or when he looks into the mirror, finds his hairline receding and is contemplating a hair transplant. “Bloody Hell, you’re going bald. You’re only a young lad.”
To be fair to Rooney — and this is just a personal opinion — no footballer should write a book before he actually retires and has something to reflect on. There is a tendency with a lot of English footballers that as soon as they become a little successful, out they come with a book. Ashley Cole has written one. As have Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and many more. They don’t have a great story to tell and end up writing really bad books.
Also this is not Rooney’s first book. One official autobiography was released five years ago when Rooney was just 22. So this book doesn’t delve into his personal life at all — though there is a chapter where he talks about meeting a young fan who asks him how he actually became a football player and Rooney talks about the days he broke into the Everton football team.
Since the book is about his years in the Premier League it does have some decent insights into players, especially Cristiano Ronaldo (how he worked hard to become one of the greatest players in the world), the professionalism of old United stalwarts like Gary Neville and Paul Scholes and even into how Sir Alex Ferguson manages a club of United’s magnitude. But those are few and far between. Rooney also talks about how he almost left United when he submitted a transfer request but soon realised that it was going to be a mistake. The most interesting bits are when he talks of being injured, watches his team play and understands what fans must go through at those times.
Even die-hard Manchester United or Wayne Rooney fans will find it hard to find anything substantial in this book. Watching Rooney the footballer is a pleasure but reading about Rooney the footballer is certainly not. Stick to the football, Wayne.
MY DECADE IN THE PREMIER LEAGUE
Author: Wayne Rooney and Matt Allen
Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages: 320
Price: Rs 399
