Manchester United legend Wayne has revealed the moment he got the epiphany that he would translate from a football player to a manager.
Speaking in The Overlap with his former Manchester United teammate and pundit Gary Neville, the 38-year-old revealed his desire to take up a management role in football was triggered towards the end of his career, especially during the arrival of Louis Van Gaal as Man United manager.
“Towards the end of my career, probably under Van Gaal, is when I started thinking about my career after football,’ he told former team-mate Gary Neville on The Overlap.
”Even when I was younger, I always felt that I wanted to stay in the game from a coaching point of view, but I started thinking more seriously about it when Van Gaal came to United.
”I used to sit with Ryan Giggs and he used to analyse the opposition for Louis. I used to sit there a lot and got into it a little bit, and always felt from there that I wanted to do.”
Away from his heroic playing career, Wayne has not aced it in the dugout as manager. He began his managerial career with Championship side Derby County in 2020, first taking up the role of a player-manager before being handed full charge of the club. After a disappointing campaign that ended in relegation to the third tier, he resigned and took up his second managerial role with DC United in the MLS.
It was equally another nightmare in the US elite division for Rooney. After a promising start, DC United fell off the pecking order drastically under his watch with a series of dismal results.
At the end of the campaign, he reached a mutual agreement to end his collaboration with the club and was back to England where he took up another coaching role with Birmingham City.
At Birmingham City, Rooney was sacked just a few months into his reign following a disastrous campaign that saw the club near relegation to the third tier.
Out of the dugout following a third consecutive unsuccessful spell with different clubs, he took up punditry roles as he lacked new offers to retry again.
Fortunately, he has bagged another offer recently with Plymouth and will hope to turn a corner from his deadlocks and boost his managerial career.
