Wayne Rooney and his strike partner, a tiny Star Wars robot
To understand Wayne Rooney is to understand the very essence of Englishness. Wayne Rooney is many things – father, footballer, Stereophonics fan, rejected Krankie sibling, essentially a freckle that learned to kick – but fundamentally, deep beneath it all, he is the most successful athlete England currently has going, even as his form starts to wane, as he approaches his professional twilight, as he packs up like a car boot at 1pm on a Sunday. Wayne Rooney the footballer is all but over – his touch heavy, his lung-busting dynamism replaced with despair, that fire he used to have for kicking Ricardo Carvalho in the crotch and sprinting after referees shouting replaced with exasperated sighs and great conducter-esque arm gestures, the entirety of Old Trafford in one perfect voice shouting “WANKER!” – but there is a second career waiting for him. A pundit, perhaps. A coach. He’s too high-profile for the after-dinner speech circuit, but too unpolished for a Beckham-style LA retirement. Too big to buy and run a pub, but too Wayne Rooney to be anything other than a man who buys and runs a pub. Essentially: as Wayne Rooney races to the zenith of his playing career, he approaches a purgatoric choice: anonymity, or empty punditry? The pay cheque or the quiet life? Peace, or the constant threat of failure?
Neither. Wayne Rooney is going to be the greatest surrealist of our generation.
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It is important you watch this video without agenda. Oh but this is clearly a marketing stunt undergone by, surreally, the Foreign Office, who paid Wayne Rooney as part of some weird ongoing contractual thing— no. Don’t want to hear it. But Wayne Rooney the Brand is available to whore himself variously out to whoever pays the highest dollar amount, be it Pepsi or Nike or Casillero del Diablo, his endorsement counts for nothing, his face is just a sheen in front of a dull quiet void— no, stop getting Wayne Rooney wrong. Just enjoy him saying “My Jedi master was probably Alan Stubbs” without preconception. Just listen to him describe Juan Mata as being like Yoda because he’s “very small, obviously like Yoda” and “in some ways, a bit of a genius”. Just watch as he sincerely – and this is all sincerity, Rooney, this is the troubled child at school with the foster parents and the history of bin fires finally being given a piece of homework he is passionate about and getting fully stuck into and somehow securing off the back of this one piece of home work a full ride to a nearby boarding school that beats some discipline into him and that bad kid grows up to be Steve Jobs – just watch as he sincerely proposes a Rooney–BB-8 axis at the top of the pitch. BB-8 is quick. Wayne Rooney is skilled and powerful. In many ways, that animatronic robo-ball is the most well-suited strike partner he’s had since Ronaldo.
Watch it again now:
The highlight for me is when he suggests Chewbacca could fulfil the as yet unheralded goalkeeper-centre back quasi-position, a sort of False 1 role, “because of the size of him”, a sentence that contains multitudes. The unsaid context of that sentence is: I am bantering Chewbacca off, here. The unsaid context of that sentence is: I know Chewbacca is a big lad, because I train regularly with him. Wayne Rooney speaks about Chewbacca with the same familiarity he might recount a training ground prank played on him by Peter Crouch – a similar tall, odd noise producer – as if he’s about to follow it up with a laugh and a ‘No, Crouchy’s a good lad’. He speaks about Chewbacca as if he’s about to go for a curry with him after. He speaks about Chewbacca as if their wives are friends.
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Rooney has always been painted as a sort of footballing idiot savant – an idea only endorsed and cemented by the line “the advice I’d give the Star Wars actors is just enjoy it” – a super-soldier bred in a lab to shank overhead kicks and whump penalties firmly into the top corner, all but the most base emotions filtered out of him, all but the most simple two-beers-please English neglected in his teaching. But that’s, clearly, wrong. Wayne Rooney is the greatest surrealist of our time. He never cracks in this video, never falters. His dedication to creating a hybrid Manchester United/Star Wars XI is entirely unwavering. Wayne Rooney x Foreign Office x Star Wars contains ticks all the boxes that the great surrealist works do – their basis firmly in a dream, wobbling into the humourous and absurd, something firm and real refracted and distorted through the prism of the unconventional – to be elevated to the pantheon of all the great masterpieces. Wayne Rooney fondly cradling a tiny BB-8 in his hands is our melting clocks. Dali himself couldn’t have come up with the line “my Jedi master was probably Alan Stubbs”. Wayne Rooney is an artist and a genius. May the force be with him.
That said if we take him to Euro 2016 I redact every fucking word of the above.
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