Will Wayne’s World Be Compatible with Jose Mourinho’s?

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Updated: August 5, 2016

“Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Only in football does turning 30 constitute the setting in of old age.

For clarity, Dylan Thomas did not have Wayne Rooney in mind when he sat down to write his most famous work, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.” Yet if Rooney has designs on the Jose Mourinho years being anything more than a gentle swansong to his Manchester United career, he would need to rediscover the rage that took him from the tough streets of Croxteth to the pinnacle of his profession.

Former managers David Moyes and Louis van Gaal may have settled for Rooney playing below par; Mourinho will want an on-field lieutenant to mirror his own persona. In short, Rooney needs to be the horrible bastard he was at the start of his career.

Whether he still has it in him or is running on empty after over 700 senior matches is not clear.

Few called Jamie Carragher a fool when last season on Sky Sports (via The Independent) he proffered:

I just think that battering from centre-backs and the pressure that is on him, mentally as well, to play from that age of 16, I think we are looking at a player who is getting to the stage of his career where I don’t think he will be playing at the top level at 34-35.

I just think he’s been playing so long now that maybe it’s 30 on his birth certificate but in terms of games played he’s a 35-year-old player.

In terms of age, there seem to be fewer doubts about Zlatan Ibrahimovic at 34 than there are about Rooney at 30. The Swede’s physique remains immaculate, with a black belt in taekwondo perhaps helping him in terms of both flexibility and agility. Rooney is no kung-fu king, but he likely has one of those t-shirts you get for finishing the biggest burger on the menu.

The arrivals of Ibrahimovic and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, emergence of Marcus Rashford and continued excellence of Anthony Martial threaten to reduce him to the periphery. Jesse Lingard and Juan Mata, whose groan could probably be heard as far away as Chelsea when Mourinho got the United job in May, are also vying for starting spots.

A senior statesman to his younger team-mates these days, perhaps more careful with his words than his passes, Rooney is no longer the firebrand figure of days of yore.

He may need to be that guy again if he’s to avoid being quietly ushered out of the building like the bloke in accounts who didn’t think it weird when his boss told him his new office was in the staff car park.

For the minute, Mourinho is beating the drum for his captain, with the pair having spent much of the summer forming a mutual appreciation society, as relayed by Anthony Jepson of the Manchester Evening News:

He is a player I always wanted to have in my side. Finally, I have him and I have him in the club he loves, the club where he has spent the best years of his career.

And, I think, the best is yet to come from him.

I find him full of motivation, full of joy to work every day, and happy to be here as a leader for the young people. He’s my man too. I can say, at this moment, he is my man. I am really happy.

On paper, it’s easy to see why they might be kindred spirits.

Maybe the United manager sees something of himself in Rooney. Even if Rooney’s decline has been easier to plot on a graph (a steady downward trajectory as opposed to Mourinho’s dramatic crash last season), both are champions with their stock as low as it has been for years. Both have a little of the devil in them. Neither is liked by opposition supporters—and in Rooney’s case not even massively by his own.

Even at his Manchester United testimonial on Wednesday evening against Everton, as polite as it was, there has always been a sense the relationship between club, player and supporters has been as much a marriage of convenience as it has a full-blooded love affair. He has never held the reverence of the Manchester public like the Class of ’92, the Busby Babes, Eric Cantona, Cristiano Ronaldo, Bryan Robson or any of George Best, Sir Bobby Charlton and Denis Law.

Agitating to leave Old Trafford, as Rooney did twice, per Ben Smith of BBC Sport, has never sat well with supporters.

Thanks again to @ManUtd and all the fans for making last night one to remember! pic.twitter.com/U1S8I1ovcQ

— Wayne Rooney (@WayneRooney) August 4, 2016

To claim Rooney’s best is yet to come seems fanciful—ludicrous even. But perhaps bringing it out is a challenge Mourinho has set himself. He scored 34 goals in 2009/10 and repeated the feat two seasons later. Between 2006 and 2009, he won three Premier League titles and the Champions League. Roll the clock back even further, and Rooney won the PFA Young Player of the Year in each of his first two seasons at United, 2004/05 and 2005/06.

At Euro 2004, his performance was perhaps the best by a young player at a major international tournament since Pele in the 1958 World Cup. That’s how good Rooney was.

As BBC Sport reported at the time, when Mourinho was looking for a centre-forward for Chelsea in 2013, he wanted Rooney. Football years are like dog years, though. The eight Premier League goals he managed last season made up his lowest return for 13 years. Mourinho may have wanted Rooney forever and a day, but now he’s got him, does he know what to do with him?

Having reinvented himself as a midfielder to mixed results in recent years, Mourinho’s first press conference soon put paid to that experiment. Rooney’s feted long-passing game was dismissed with a snarky retort, with athleticism in his midfielders taking priority over an ability to hit long diagonals that are pretty but not particularly penetrative.

Jose Mourinho praises @WayneRooney on #MUTVHD ahead of kick-off in skipper’s testimonial… https://t.co/x7lZtNNZ1s

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) August 3, 2016

“You can tell me his pass is amazing, yes his pass is amazing, but my pass is also amazing without pressure,” Mourinho said, per Alan Smith of the Guardian. “There are many players with a great pass but to be there and put the ball in the net is the most difficult thing to find, so for me he will be a 9, a 10, a nine and a half but not a 6, not even an 8.”

Square pegs in round holes …

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