On the face of it, in this media age, obsessed as it is with the beautiful, the glamorous and the good-looking, Wayne Rooney is an unlikely hero. Thick-set, built like a bull, balding and bearded; it's not the preferred look of the catwalk.
In that respect he is a kind of anti-hero; an everyman for the masses who appeals because he looks like a bricklayer on your local building site.
Rooney is a throwback to an era when players looked like men, not teen idols. Both men and women like this. It is somehow comforting to see a proper bloke and not some streamlined athlete with an expensive, fashionable haircut. And when he scores he doesn't do some stupid dance and try to look cool. He looks as delighted as we feel we would in such circumstances. He appears to be connected to the real world despite living an exalted life.
None of this would matter if he wasn't so bloody good at football. Unlike so many players, the hyperbole around Rooney, especially this season, is justified.
His swashbuckling style of play is the perfect blend of physicality, work ethic and relentless energy combined with supreme skill and vision. A bloke I know, Alf, a 64-year-old gadgee, sums this up perfectly.
"He's plays like a foreigner and like an Englishman all at the same time."
Many have the work ethic but not the skill; many have the skill but can't put a decent shift in. The fact that Rooney does both to such a high standard makes him an irresistible character even to the neutral football fan.
Many of us instinctively shy away from praising someone who is such a focus of tabloid and media attention because the number of column inches is all too often in inverse proportion to the achievements of the individual. In a sense, I don't want to like him because somehow it plugs into all that facile Hello/Heat culture. The modern media messes with your head like this and you end up taking a position on people based entirely on their exposure.
But the rise and rise of Rooney is a fascinating, compulsive story. Amazing to think he's still only 24. The barn-storming kid at Everton who would bulldoze through defences with reckless abandon has inevitably been tamed, but this season we've seen some of that old unstoppability return in a more mature form. There are times when you feel he just will not be denied. His burst of pace for his goal at Arsenal and the timing of his stride to hit the ball accurately first time were pure artistry; skill and physicality in one perfect blend.
The red-faced manic persona of yore also seems to have cooled somewhat and with that, a greater composure on the ball has emerged. His long-range passing at times this season has been like watching Glenn Hoddle in his pomp. One cross-field ball in the midweek game against City was the equal of Beckham at the peak of his powers. On top of this he's got 20 league goals in 23 games. He's like two great players all in one; an attacking midfielder breaking open defences and a prolific goalscorer.
Being the focus of attention at Manchester United is a pressure many cannot bear. It has crushed great players time and again in the past. Rooney is different. The more expectation on him, the more he has risen to meet the challenge. The liberation in his play is palpable now that Ronaldo has moved on.
As he goes into contract negotiations he has already said he's happy to stay at Old Trafford - not a typical bargaining position - and while the money he earns is stellar, you don't get the impression that he's the sort to hussle for an extra 10k on 120k.
It's been said to the point of cliché that he's like a schoolyard kid who just wants to kick a ball around but his unfettered commitment to playing, in an era of half-assed, lazy, ego-monsters, inevitably provokes such comments. However, that doesn't do justice to how he's worked on his game. It suggests it's all natural skill. But you can see how he's gone about improving. His first touch has become more reliable, but it is his vision to spot a pass and to take a goalscoring position that has seen the biggest growth.
This is all the more remarkable in a season when at times he has seemed to drag United single-handed through games; like a footballing dray horse. Unlike Ronaldo before him, he does so not for personal glorification or ego-stroking, he does it for the side.
The notion of burn-out has reached hysterical heights in modern football. Managers have got it into their heads that a fit young man can't be expected to play two or three games in a week. Rooney contradicts these fanciful notions. He seems to get better the more he plays. He appears stronger, not weaker after a long run of games. Rather than all this work making him more liable to injury, it seems to make him less vulnerable.
A friend of a friend actually works for Wayne in some capacity and reports him to be a very humble, quiet, shy lad with no side to him at all, which, all things considered is quite remarkable, though not quite as remarkable as some of his performances this season.
With so much adoring praise and lavish attention from a media keen to over-rate, over-praise and over-criticise, it'd be easy to be cynical about Rooney. But this kid is a force of nature. A regular man with an extraordinary talent, we will all look back in our dotage and say, 'aye, now that lad was a proper player'.
@football365.com
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