Rooney Guardian Article

[MikeO]

Like this take on the book if you've got a few mins to read it..

 

It would be easy to sneer loftily at Wayne Rooney's "My Life Until Two Weeks Ago", the five million quid HarperCollins is paying him for his meanderings, and the whole cretinised community that hangs on his words like they matter. So let's.

Rooney himself, of course, hasn't put pen to paper since the original signature: it is penny-a-liner-to-the-stars Hunter Davies who has spent the last few months navigating Rooney's hidden shallows. But even such an accomplished practitioner cannot present Rooney as other than dumb as a box of hammers.

 

 

Serialisation in the Mail on Sunday has "revealed" a fat lot of not much. No, he's not upset with Cristiano Ronaldo. No, Sven-Goran wasn't angry with him when he was red-carded. No, he doesn't mind being called Potato Face or Ugly Arse. No, he isn't bothered about being paid 50,000 quid a week for kicking a ball when people making life and death decisions earn a fraction of that in a year. Oh, hang on, he doesn't actually say that. Sorry, Potato Face.

Of course, the football autobiography is nowadays a routine affair. Apologies for the relevant indiscretions - the drink, the drugs, the prostitutes, the strippers, the Nazi salutes, the affairs with Patsy Kensit. No apologies for punching the photographer, urinating on the journalist, swearing at the television interviewer . . . Actually the media is fair game, 'cos they all need a good slapping. And, on second thoughts, ditto Patsy Kensit.

 

There's even something rather reassuring about this ritual self-absolution. It symbolises an acceptance of the rules of celebrity, formalises a bond with other members of the football elite, and diversifies the commodity of the athlete himself. It cost Man Utd 25 million quid to buy the real Roonmeister; now you can take home your own version and still have change out of a pony!

 

"My Life So Far", however, is an extreme embodiment of the challenge to modern sporting celebrities when they come to imparting their story: we already know everything. Can a more humdrum 20-year life have been wrung drier of its minuscule juice than Rooney's? His latest "revelation" is that he ran up £700,000 of gambling debts "out of boredom". Hell, if Rooney reads his own autobiography, there's no telling what he might do.

 

By literary lights, then, there can scarcely have been a less necessary book. Similar levels of public information would have been achieved by wrapping a Rooney mask around a house brick. But, needless to say, public information isn't the half of it. In economic terms, in fact, the argument for "My Life So Far" is unassailable.

 

Footballers unblushingly pull down sums offensive to anyone's idea of a fair and equitable wage. What's less often acknowledged is the cash they rain, directly and indirectly, quantifiably and not, on others unknown to fame, from money men and merchandisers to scalpers and zine writers. Given the current vogue for freakonomics, explaining how stock prices move in lockstep with sunspot activity and such, it's a wonder no bright young bean-counter has tried to model the economics of Wayne Rooney: the big fleas, little fleas, lesser fleas and so on ad infinitum

 

Amazon, for example, lists 16 Rooney titles, the first of them published when he was 17. Only the most recent four, including the hardback and paperback of "My Life So Far" and the forthcoming "official" annual, have originated within Rooney Inc. And by the time "Sudoku The Rooney Way" appears in 2018, even with the best management in the world, he will have captured only a small proportion of the total turnover deriving from his name, image, feats and fame; the existence of other artefacts, in fact, threatens to dilute the proportion available to him.

 

The result is an autobiography as inevitable as it is pointless, for no play-off between literature and economics has ever gone to penalties: economics has always enjoyed a walkover. I blame Rupert Murdoch. After all, that's what he's there for.

[Romey 1878]

Sounds like a good article. I was tempted to buy it to see what crap he came out with, but I wouldnt like to be sent asleep by it so I wont bother

[Mac]

I will get it from the library when available, but there is no bloody way I am gonna buy the f*cking thing.

 

ATB

 

Mac

[Pat]

Ill give it a miss.

[thebluenose]

i read the article

 

he left Everton (allegedly) because he wanted to get away from moyes.

 

moyes wanted to get a bit of discipline into his life as he was losing his temper too often on the pitch and in training.

 

rooney said that moyes was being a 'control freak' and wanted everything to go his way

 

he said that if no-one came for him he would ave joined the barcodes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

as if sir alex isnt a control freak. he lets all the players do what they want and couldnt care less...... wayne you left for the money and moyes was trying to make you a better player and you shoved it all back into his face. sorry wayne you given me a better reason to hate you. once again you shit on the club who gave you the chance to make it big and the club you allegedly supported from birth

[Romey 1878]

I cant believe he brags in his book that he told Beckham to fuck off against Northern Ireland, what a wanker that makes him look.