He thinks I’ve thrown it at him.
Oh no, here we go.
Out comes the second yellow card, then the red. Game over.
I can only think of one thing.
This is going to cost us the league.
Two defeats on the bounce; a suspension for the next match. I’m livid. The red mist comes on. As I walk off the pitch, the crowd start to jeer. Everything boils up inside me, my head’s banging. Sometimes in those situations, I get so angry that I never know what I’m going to do next. Thankfully, nobody gets in my way. The first thing that crosses my path is the corner flag. I lamp it. When I get to the dressing room, I punch the wall and nearly break my hand.
Paul Scholes is already sitting there, staring at me, just watching, as if it’s only natural for me to stick a right hook onto a concrete wall. He’s had time to shower and change. He’s looking smart in his official club suit.
‘You as well?’
I nod. My hand is killing me, I worry I might have busted it.
Nice one, Wayne.
Neither of us says a word. I sit there in my kit, fuming. Then a flash of fear comes into my head.
Oh god, The Manager’s going to kill me.
I hear the final roar from the crowd as the whistle goes. We’ve lost, 2–0. I hear the players’ studs clicking on the concrete path that leads to the dressing room. The door opens, but nobody talks as they sit down.
Silence.
Nobody looks at me. Giggsy, Jonny Evans, Rio, Edwin van der Sar, all of them stare at the floor. Then The Manager comes in and goes mad.
‘You were poor as a team!’ he screams. ‘We didn’t perform!’
He points at me, furious, red in the face, chewing gum.
‘And you need to calm down. Relax!’
The Manager’s right: I should relax, but he knows as well as me that the thought of losing is what drives me on in football, in everything, because he’s built the same way.
We both hate to be second best.
*****
Look, I’m not always happy about it.
After the Fulham game, I worry that people have an opinion on what sort of person I am because of what they see on the football pitch. They see me punching corner flags and shouting on the telly and must think that I’m like that in everyday life. They watch me going in hard in the tackle and probably assume that I’m some kind of thug. Sometimes, when people see me pushing my son Kai around the supermarket with Coleen, they stare at me with their jaws open, like I should be in my kit, shinpads and boots, arguing with the bloke collecting the trollies, or kicking down a stack of toilet rolls in a massive strop.
These are much cheaper down the road!
I’m not like that though.
When I first meet people I’m quiet and shy. I don’t open up that easily. I definitely don’t react badly in conversation and I don’t talk to friends and family in the same way as I talk to defenders and teammates. I don’t tell them to ‘eff off’ if things don’t go my way. I don’t turn the computer off if I’m watching my pals play. Losing it only happens when I’m competing. And only if I lose. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s something I’ve had to live with. I obviously have two very different mindsets: one that drives me on in the thick of a game and another I live my life by. The two never cross over.
1John Donnelly, if you’re wondering, is now a professional boxer, a super flyweight. I spent a lot of time thinking about becoming a pro fighter too, but in the end I went for football.
Matches are won and lost in the tunnel at Old Trafford, but the one thing I notice when I stand there for the first time as a United player is that it seems to go on for miles and miles. It’s long and dark. The ceilings are low and the players bump into one another as they walk to the pitch, almost shoulder to shoulder, because it’s so narrow and cramped. At the end, over the heads of players, officials and the TV cameramen, past the red canopy that stretches out onto the pitch, I can see the bright green blur of the grass, the floodlights and the crowd and some United fans hanging over the edge of the wall, shouting and waving flags.
It’s September 2004, United against Fenerbahçe. I’m about to make my first-team debut in the Champions League, a competition I’ve always dreamt of playing in.
The noise is mad, a buzz of 67,128 people, like a loud hum. When I first played here against United for Everton that buzz weighed me down a bit. It felt claustrophobic, it felt like a cup final. It did my head in. Now it pumps me up, but I can see why some players might feel trapped in here. Standing in the Old Trafford tunnel is like being in a box. If a footballer hasn’t been here before and they’re lined up next to the United players for the first time, it’s a terrifying moment. The weight of expectation is huge. A player has to be able to handle it if they’re going to be able to play well in front of the crowd here.
The Manager knows all about the importance of this place. The atmosphere is such a big deal that he even makes it his business to find out which players from the opposition have faced us here before and which ones haven’t. He tells us before a game; he knows who’s frightened and he wants us to know, too. Sometimes, as we get ready he lists names from the other lot, the lads playing here for the first time – they’re the ones who might not be on their game.
Later in the season I see it for myself. In some teams, the newly promoted ones usually, the players look scared as they start their walk to the pitch. Others look as if they’re starting their big day out for the season, or even their career. I can tell that they want to make the most of it, that they want to soak up the occasion. They clock their families in the stands and smile and wave like it’s their biggest ever achievement. As they make the slow walk from the tunnel in the corner of the ground to the halfway line they’re thinking one thing: Bloody hell, this is Old Trafford. Good news for us: the distraction can stop them from thieving a point. Bad news for them: they’re 1–0 down psychologically.
Now I’m about to make my first walk from the tunnel in a United shirt.
Today it’s all about my signing, my first game. I’ve been at the club nearly two months, but I haven’t played a minute of first team football after I busted a bone in my foot at Euro 2004, which has been annoying for everyone because I cost the club a lot of money. Still, the fans have been sound. I see them on the box and they’re saying how excited they are to see me here, but the one worry at the back of my mind is that it might take a while for them to accept me because I’m a Scouser. I might have to do something really special to win them over.
They’re on my side tonight, though. The crowd are singing my name before I even get onto the pitch.
‘Rooney!’
‘Rooney!’
‘Roooooooo-neeeeee!’
The shivers run down my spine as I walk into the glare of the floodlights for the first time in a red shirt. I’m bricking it.
It makes me laugh whenever I watch the tape of that game now: I come out of the tunnel with a chewy in my mouth and my eyes don’t seem to move as I walk across the grass. I don’t even blink. I stare straight ahead, trying to focus. The camera catches me puffing my chest out, getting myself ready, staring at the sky