Wayne Rooney: Fame is ruin of many a poor boy

WHAT kind of abuse will Wayne Rooney suffer when he returns to his former club Everton tomorrow trailing a sulphurous cloud of scandal?

Wayne Rooney is human like the rest of us Wayne Rooney is human like the rest of us

He may be the victim of a barrage of sharp Scouse wit. It might not be polite and proper. But it would at least represent something of football’s long tradition of barracking and dark humour. A feisty part of the game’s rough-and-tumble.

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Or there may be a torrent of the foul-mouthed, finger-jabbing vitriol which is commonplace at most grounds these days. And which those involved seem to think is the legitimate product of their passion and love for their clubs.

Given that extra police may be laid on for the game against Manchester United, it seems clear which of the above options is likely to be chosen by some sections of the crowd. There is history around this, of course. Way beyond the front page eruption in which Rooney has landed himself by apparently cheating on his pregnant wife with prostitutes.

But by no means are Everton a club where the return of prodigal former players prompts fury and bitterness. Or where supporters go off like foaming, indignant maniacs at the slightest excuse.

No, if there is an explosion of anger at Rooney tomorrow, it will be yet another confirmation that, in this age of celebrity, football fame has become the most poisoned and demanding kind around. Pop and rock stars drink, smoke and bed hookers and it is part of the job.

Soap stars play away but the exposure in the gossip columns is often a good career move. Politicians get up to every vice imaginable – often on fiddled public expenses, but nobody shouts at them in the street unless it is Tony Blair – and that is because he started a war.

Footballers, however, are called to account far more stringently – over their morals, their money and their lifestyles. And they are never forgiven. Unhappily, some of them have not worked out this harsh rule of public life.

Perhaps the agents they employ so expensively could offer some pointers. The reasons things are like this are as complicated as the modern society we have created. But there is a basic one. Sport is supposed to represent the best of humanity. Athletes are supposed to be pure and wholesome.

It is a fantasy, of course. They are mortals like the rest of us and Rooney seems to have demonstrated this particularly sordidly. But that is not the idea projected by the basic job description.

So, even though half of the publicity about them gushes slaveringly about their wealth and their celebrity, they cannot escape the demands of the other image they plough so lucratively – of being athletic gods. It is a huge paradox. One some of them have helped create themselves. But it happens because football matters so much to the nation. It is because there is real passion involved, even if it so often gets twisted into a tribal outpourings of hatred.

As it fetes them so grandly – and while fans want their clubs to pay them vast fortunes to secure their services – the country also wants its footballers to have a touch of the humble, old-fashioned hero about them. This ignores the fact that past idols got up to all sorts. There was no prying public interest then.

It has not helped that so many of the big names landing on the front pages – or in the High Court’s super injunction office – have been involved in so much failure with the England team.

It is a short leap for the public, when roused to indignation by events like the World Cup failure, to blame it, say, upon the drinking and smoking Rooney was photographed enjoying in United’s pre-season. Or on a lack of character and moral responsibility, typified by this year’s sex scandals.

The irony is that these men are hugely successful with their clubs. And that Rooney, in Switzerland this week, was utterly unaffected on the pitch by events off it. The fury of the crowds – Rooney would be abused wherever he played tomorrow – is further fanned by a remoteness of the players from the fans.

In a game driven by intensity of feeling and embedded so deeply in the country’s social roots, this is dangerous stuff.

A new generation of England players is emerging. Adam Johnson, Joe Hart and Phil Jagielka do not, from a distance, seem the kind to be seduced into this world of celebrity. But that was once said about Everton starlet Rooney at 16.

Somehow, in a commercial world and in a voracious media climate, the FA and the clubs have got to take action to keep the new breed off the front pages.

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