On the face of it, they make an unusual couple. Two individuals divided by several generations and very different backgrounds. Roy Hodgson and Wayne Rooney: with not a huge amount in common, one imagines, once professional interests are removed. And yet, their stories are so entwined it is tempting to wonder how far we have to go back before locating another England manager and captain with the same form of attachment.
A long time, presumably, judging by the letter Rooney keeps at home along with his England caps, the shirts and other memorabilia. It arrived one day last October, shortly after England’s final qualifying game, and it was Hodgson’s way of putting on record his gratitude for Rooney’s contribution. There was a bottle of champagne, too, but it was the eulogy in Hodgson’s spidery handwriting that showed Rooney, more than anything, how highly his manager valued him.
This is certainly no usual manager-player relationship. A small thing, perhaps, but there was another example when England were arranging their trip to Chantilly and Hodgson floated the idea of the players cycling through the Picardy countryside from their hotel to the training ground. “The players should enjoy that,” Hodgson said. Rooney was consulted, thought about it for a few moments and then explained in his understated way they would rather get a bus, the old-fashioned way, than being followed by photographers. Hodgson duly scrapped the idea.
For Rooney, there is a level of input and responsibility here that he has not encountered elsewhere in his career, and it goes beyond the fact he will be expected to deliver a rallying cry – “he doesn’t hold back,” according to Jack Wilshere – before the team leave the dressing room in the Stade Bollaert-Delelis, Lens, for Thursday’s assignment with Wales.
It certainly was not there in Sir Alex Ferguson’s final days at Manchester United when their relationship had broken irreparably and it was no coincidence Rooney did not even tap out a condolences tweet when Louis van Gaal was fired last month. It was Rooney, along with Michael Carrick, who went to see Van Gaal last season to ask a difficult, impenetrable manager to stop being so overbearing. Rooney could not get through to Van Gaal and there was a direct correlation about the way England’s record scorer contributed more, on the whole, for Hodgson than his last club manager.
Rooney, put bluntly, has felt happier, or at least freer, in England’s colours, and who can really be surprised given Van Gaal’s style of play at Old Trafford, how little the strikers saw of the ball and the narrative that went with finishing the league last season with their worst goals return for over a quarter of a century? Rooney managed eight, his lowest figures since joining the club in 2004. He had become exasperated, in keeping with the general mood of the dressing room, about a style where strikers were discouraged from spontaneous play, imposed by a manager who frequently gave the impression the flowers should be smelling him.
With Hodgson, it is a very different dynamic. In Marseille last Friday, the day before England’s opening game against Russia, a few of us had a private huddle with Rooney in the Stade Vélodrome. Hodgson stood by Rooney, listening to the way he dealt with the questions, and the manager’s body language was a mix of pride and affection. His eyes twinkled. He smiled and nodded his head approvingly. Hodgson likes listening to Rooney and seeing, close up, how his player has matured during their four years together. He appreciates the way Rooney will stand up to talk to the other players. And, no doubt, he sees his own work in the process. “He is the ultimate professional,” Hodgson says.
It is the same paternal streak that led to Hodgson calling aside Wilshere later that day, draping an arm around the player’s shoulder and walking around the pitch together, deep in conversation. Was that the moment Hodgson told Wilshere he was out of the team? “No,” Wilshere said. “He was asking about my tattoos, he wanted to know what they mean.” So Wilshere went through his body ink, starting with the initials of an uncle who had been killed, aged 16, in a car crash 10 years ago. Hodgson, to clarify, is not planning to get a tattoo but don’t be totally fooled by his avuncular reputation. He has plenty of the footballers’ accessories – the Louis Vuitton wash bag, Prada shoes, a Hublot watch – and he is a young 68. It isn’t hard for him to communicate with a captain less than half his own age.
Rooney, in turn, likes the manager’s eccentricities. He finds it amusing that Hodgson can work himself up into some extraordinary lathers behind the scenes. But most of all, he feels Hodgson’s trust. And Rooney, like most footballers, plays better when he and his manager are devoted to one another. Twelve goals in 17 appearances since the World Cup shows the disparity between his performances for his national team and his club side.
Beyond that, it barely seems to matter that, outside football’s bubble, you would not generally put Hodgson and Rooney together. Hodgson speaks with great animation about the works of the late Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig. A voracious reader, he can often be found ensconced in a Hermann Hesse novel, or Gabriel García Márquez perhaps, or any of the other gems he has stumbled across in Marylebone’s Daunt Books. Hodgson’s favourite book is Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Rooney’s: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone). He has compared his career to a painting by the abstract Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky, having gone “sideways, backwards, then upwards again”, and if you are a member of the Garrick Club he might happily explain why over a glass of red.
All of which feels a long way removed from the world Rooney has inhabited since signing his first professional contract at Everton, with all those tales of him kicking a screwed-up drinks can round the streets of Croxteth and an introductory press conference at Goodison most memorable for the 17-year-old’s words getting stuck in his throat.
Thirty-one on his next birthday, Rooney has developed into a more rounded football man than many people realise. He is already studying coaching qualifications. Talk to him privately and he will express his concerns about the way young players have everything done for them. He makes it his business to look out for newcomers to the England squad and it was his idea to accompany Marcus Rashford to an interview with the Football Association’s media team last week. Rashford is the youngest player in Euro 2016, with braces on his teeth, but the 18-year-old immediately seemed at ease with Rooney in the next chair.
Hodgson, in turn, has made it clear during England’s first week on French territory that his loyalty to Rooney is unbreakable. And, in one respect, it is clever management. Rooney is so popular within the dressing room that by engineering this kind of relationship – and it was similar with Steven Gerrard, the previous captain – the other players immediately respect the manager’s authority.
José Mourinho appears to have a similar mindset given that Rooney spent over a year trying to get Van Gaal to sign off his testimonial arrangements. Mourinho sorted out everything in his first week in the job and an announcement that was meant to happen on 8 February finally took place last week. From Mourinho, it was simple yet effective man-management - and Rooney already feels indebted to his new manager.
Just compare that to the conversation Rooney had with Van Gaal after the game at Stoke City on Boxing Day. Rooney had been dropped from a struggling, low-on-confidence side. He accepted the manager’s reasons but he also made it clear that when he returned to the team he would revert to playing his natural game if sticking with Van Gaal’s instructions had left him unable to make the side. Rooney came back in the following week and, freed of the straightjacket, scored seven times in the next eight matches. Van Gaal being Van Gaal, there would not been a single moment when he thought his player maybe had a point.
Hodgson, or “Roy as his captain calls him (no “gaffer” or “boss” here), has never encountered those kind of issues with Rooney and, almost certainly, never will.
He has been accused on occasions of being too devoted to his captain, particularly in those spells when Rooney’s club form slumped. Yet one thing has become clear spending time with England’s unlikely couple: they need each other.
“You can never doubt his professionalism, his desire to do the right thing for England and his ability to sacrifice himself, if necessary, for the good for the team,” Hodgson explains. “As a coach, it is everything you could want from a player.”
