What is a football club? It’s not a rhetorical question, and it’s one I keep returning to over the years. Most recently it was when Wayne Rooney, my beloved childhood idol and star member of the “good but not quite as good as he could have been” club, departed Manchester United after 13 glorious, record-breaking seasons in the summer of 2017. Rooney was the first player I ever loved – I’d had a brief dalliance with Henry (too much Gallic sophistication) and Cristiano (too inhumanly perfect), but Rooney, this stocky irrepressible terrier of a player who would pound over every blade of grass for the team every time he played, but still couldn’t avoid the occasional pint and cigarette, was the first footballer I loved passionately. Fans love the players they see themselves in – and even when his touch deserted him and his legs lost that explosive pace, you could still see a giddy and delirious 16-year-old in Rooney’s wide-open smile every time he scored a goal.
Rooney’s career drew a line in the sand from when I started following Man Utd right up to the moment he left. It hit me even harder than when Sir Alex Ferguson retired as the manager in 2013. It left me, as well as millions of other fans, I imagine, contemplating an uncertain future. The six years since the end of the Fergie era have been as bad as many of us feared – not for the lack of success (there have been a few cups), but for a sense of something missing, of trapped energies, of United being not-quite-United anymore. When even Rooney left, I asked myself if I still cared. What is Manchester United to me anymore?
A New Hope
It used to be said of Sir Alex’s best teams that Manchester United never lose, they simply run out of time. It is that quote that I thought of when I saw Ole Solskjaer’s team beat the Imperial Stormtroopers (otherwise known as PSG) 3-1 at the Parc des Princes in Paris and progress to the Champions League quarter-finals on away goals.
