In a profile of New York Times obituary writer Alden Whitman for Esquire magazine in 1966, American journalist Gay Talese drew from his subject a pitch-black admission that he keeps his "files up-to-date," before concluding "masterful obituaries, like fine funerals, must be planned well in advance."It is unlikely Wayne Rooney would acquiesce with such a sentiment. In the fallout from his inopportune wedding crashing while on England duty in November last year, the Manchester United striker warned critics he will not let them "write my obituary," after pictures emerged of him looking as though he may have consumed a drink for every goal he has ever scored.He should take it as a compliment. Obituaries are only ever pre-written for the great and the good, or the terrible. The mediocre have them written on the day the curtain is drawn.Rooney is not terrible, with the debate about where he falls between good and great one that predates evolution. Monkeys are known to have fallen out discussing whether Rooney is world-class as often as they have over bananas.Only the arch-Rooney-sceptic, of which there are many, would not have long-since pre-prepared a paragraph extolling the significance of his becoming Manchester United's all-time leading goalscorer, even if for now it is written only in pencil. If it is gone over in pen courtesy of a landmark 250th goal for the club when Liverpool are the visitors to Old Trafford on Sunday, it will be the equivalent of John Travolta administering an adrenaline shot to Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, at least for those who fear romance in football is more dead than a bunch of garage forecourt flowers at closing time.A goal against Liverpool would be the perfect bookend to mirror the one where it all began, that first goal for Everton against Arsenal as a 16-year-old in 2002. We've certainly remembered the name.Yet even if football's gods gift to Rooney and the club's supporters a more fitting record-breaking moment than the record-equalling one that saw him match Sir Bobby Charlton's 249 goals via his knee against Reading in the FA Cup, there's a pervading sense it will be deemed a full-stop moment in his Manchester United career. Rooney would argue it should merit only a commaa time to pause and reflect before carrying on. Further chapters have yet to be written. Obituary writers need to be tighter than that when telling life stories. When Rooney hits 250 goals are hit, Rooney's will likely be filed under "good to go." Everything thereafter will complement his career, but it's nigh on certain nothing will transcend it. At 31, he seems as old now as he did young in 2002.After the player called out reporters in the aftermath of United's 1-1 draw with Arsenal in November with regards what he labelled their "disgraceful" behaviour over the England furore, he went on to qualify his sentiments via a statement issued to the BBC.It read: "Enough is enough. It feels as if the media are trying to write my obituary, and I won't let that happen.[...] I love playing for my country, and I am proud of my achievements to datebut I have not finished yet."It was an all-encompassing message. It could just as easily have been referencing his United career. Perhaps it was.No one will be more relieved when the record is broken than the notoriously shy Sir Bobby and his wife Norma, who seem permanently to have television cameras trained on them at every match of late. Each moment of action involving Rooney is followed by a quick cut to the director's box, as though Charlton might be caught flicking the Vs whenever the United man shanks one wide. Even in his current guise, as an if not quite bit-part player certainly less of a whole one than at any other point in his career, Rooney remains arguably the most divisive character in English football. Not just for the public at large, but for those who regularly frequent Old Trafford.Which, on paper at least, seems preposterous as he stands on the precipice of immortalising himself in the annals of one of the world's greatest football clubs.If Charlton's love affair with the club and its supporters still burns as bright as the day he made his debut against Charlton Athletic in October 1956 (he scored twice before going on to bag 12 goals in 14 appearances in that first season as an 18-year-old), Rooney's has always seemed more a marriage of convenience.Weekly bouts of X-rated passion between player and fans in the early years that would have made Henry Miller blush have been replaced with lights off, socks on bunk-ups since the point of his decline, which some would argue began as early as 2010.As a 24-year-old in the 2009/10 campaign, he scored 34 goals in 44 games, including the winner in the League Cup final against Aston Villa after coming off the substitutes' bench. A bull in a china shop but one capable of drinking from the finest crockery without spilling a drop, he was a beguiling mix of subtletyand violence.Rooney looked capable of becoming the best player in the world when in March 2010 he injured his ankle in a Champions League tie against Bayern Munich. He was on a run of scoring 18 goals in 13 matches heading into the summer's World Cup when injury struck.He came back too soon. In the run-in, he missed a crucial game against Chelsea, who went on to pip United to the Premier League title by a single point.All injuries are hostage to chance, but for the PFA Player of the Year to suffer one at the peak of his powers, considering what came after, recalls the Mark Twain line: "When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers."It was especially unfortunate timing given Rooney has always been so hardy. Remarkably, he has never gone a season since his breakthrough at 16 without playing at least 42 games. By the end of the season, he will have around 750 matches on the clock. It's fair to say you don't get to that figure without playing through the pain barrier on occasion. No wonder he always looks knackered. If football years are similar to dog years, he's about 105. He may be slowing, but there's no need to take him to the vets just yet.South Africa was an unmitigated disaster. A dismal tournament for England saw a less-than-fully-fit Rooney bad-mouth the travelling contingent for booing them in a dismal goalless draw against Algeria, on live TV.Perhaps only in England can a player go from hero to zero with such haste.To his English detractors, he holds a mirror up to the nation's football shortcomings. Overhyped and lacking in true technical proficiency, he's the poster boy for a lack of sophistication in a country that readily accepts a trampoline touch, just so long as it belongs to a player who wears his heart on his sleeve. Football's modernists would accept the heart being in the correct anatomical position if it meant the brain followed suit.Other than at his first tournament at Euro 2004, it would be hard to make a case for him excelling at any thereafter. In that respect, he's a figurehead of failure, though a more even-headed rationale might point out his record 53 goals for his country should buy him more credit than his team-mates, not less.It was in the same year, October 2010 the following season, Rooney requested a transfer amid purported flirtatious overtures from Manchester City. Sir Alex Ferguson in one of those rare jaw-dropping moments (think former Newcastle United manager Kevin Keegan on the steps of St James' Park explaining the sale of Andy Cole), confirmed rumours of him wanting out were true in what was a marvelously manipulated press conference.The Scot put the ball back in Rooney's court. If the player returned serve, it barely reached the net. Rooney ended up apologising, staying put and helping United to the title and a Champions League final.Further murmurs of unrest three years later in 2013, when Chelsea showed a little leg, has always been a bone of contention with which United supporters have used to beat the player over the head with. Only the pious hold his private life against him.He might never have scaled the peaks of 2010 again, but it has been a slow descent, often over-dramatised. There's a case to say Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro have been on the decline since they made Taxi Driver together in 1976, though only when placed against the most exacting of standardstheir own.In an interview with the always-eminently-readable Jonathan Northcroft of the Sunday Times, in September 2014, it was a bullish response Rooney gave to the question that has stalked his career for what seems like longer than it hasn't.When asked if he had fulfilled his potential, a question only posed to sports people, he replied: "I still believe I can get better as a footballer. In the next three to five years you will see me as a different player. The next two or three, I feel these could be the best years of my career."It would prove a false prophecy. It shouldn't matter, but for so many, it does. Rooney will forever be judged againstthe player he never became, which for this writer is a crying shame. You don't look at a Pablo Picasso painting and lament the fact it's not a Francis Bacon.Whichever way you slice and dice it, his record is phenomenal. Don't tell your kids he was an average player, you'd be lying.Comparing players is rarely an illuminating exercise, particularly when their respective careers span over such disparate eras. Praise isn't finite. It's possible to give it to one player without taking it away from another.However, given the likely usurpation of Charlton has manifest a swell of indignation among those pointing out the World Cup winner was an attacking midfielder rather than a forward, it's worth noting in his 13 years at Old Trafford, Rooney has scored his 249 goals in 215 games fewer. In that time he's often played wingman, quite literally, for the likes ofRuud van Nistelrooy, Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlos Tevez, Dimitar Berbatov, Robin van Persie and most recently Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Rarely has he complained of his lot.On last weekend's edition of the Sunday Supplement, Alyson Rudd of The Times argued a relative paucity of love for Rooney, at least in relation to his achievements, is primarily due to his ordinariness."There's something 'street-footballery' and ordinary about him. To love a player and raise him above the normal stage, there has to be something special about him.He's industrial and does his job (sounds like a hoover). There's a lot to be said about that, but it's not that inspirational a style."For many, though, the beauty to be found in watching Rooney is that ordinariness. Maybe it's just a simple question of taste. To some, a Brutalist building is the one the council forgot to pull down; to others, it's exquisite architecture. Certainly, if Rooney is ever afforded a statue, he should be cast in concrete over marble.One can't be too far off being commissioned after five Premier League titles, one Champions League, one FA Cup and two League Cups. Yet so many would find such a suggestion bordering on farcical. His Man of the Match performance in the FA Cup final against Crystal Palace last season, to complete his set of medals, seems to have been airbrushed from history already.To watch him for well over a decade and still be unsure whether he's the worst good player in the world or the best bad player somehow makes him relatable. When he's bad and his touch is off, it seems questionable how he even made it as a professional. For all that, never have I seen him hide on a football pitch. And surprisingly, that's pretty remarkable.If he were a penalty-box player, a natural goalscorer like Van Nistelrooy or Michael Owen, it would be more understandable. To point out their limitations outside of their respective fortes is easy, but with Rooney, in the space of the same move, he can be both sublime and ridiculous.He is uniquea street player who can go from looking hopelessly distracted as though his mum has called him in for his tea, to scoring an overhead kick before his plate has gone cold.Interspersed with the "ordinariness" are moments of undeniable genius. No player has won the Goal of the Season award as many times as Rooney,as noted by ESPN FC's Michael Cox.On no less than three occasions, he has been responsible for the singular most perfect moment in a Premier League season.He will likely be remembered more for the volleys against Middlesbrough (2004/05) and Manchester City (2010/11), but it was the team goal he concluded against Bolton Wanderers in 2006/07 that is perhaps the most viscerally thrilling of them all.From a Bolton set piece, Rooney and Ronaldo swept from one end of the field to the other, exchanging perfectly weighted passes, before, with the most precocious of finishes, the former left all of those inside Old Trafford feeling as though they owed him a debt of pleasure. If Ferguson was to choose just one goal that best embodied his style of football, perhaps it would be this one.Oh, to be so ordinary.Maybe that could be the final line when Rooneynot you, or Idecides he's ready for the obituary of his career to be written.It may be some time yet.
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