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Wayne Rooney hilariously digs out ‘crap’ former Everton teammates.
Wayne Rooney has acknowledged that after breaking into the team, some of his old Everton colleagues were “terrible,” which shocked him.
Rooney made his Premier League debut at the age of 16 when he defeated Arsenal goalkeeper David Seaman at Goodison Park in 2002 with an outstanding long-range strike.
The youth immediately established himself as a regular for Everton, and Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United quickly snatched him away. During a trophy-laden tenure with the club, he would go on to set the Red Devils’ all-time goalscoring record.
Speaking to Toffee TV, Rooney reminisced about his early days at Everton and how he got his break under David Moyes. Comically, he took aim at the quality of some of his teammates and admitted that he couldn’t believe how bad some of them were.
“It’s mad how quick it changed,” Rooney said when speaking of sharing a dressing room with players he’d looked up to.
“For me to go in with Duncan (Ferguson), Stubbsy (Alan Stubbs), all of them who have I grew up watching, to then go and play with them, train with them every day and play with them, and then so quickly, I remember thinking: ‘These are crap!’
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“Obviously not all of them, but some of the players I was thinking, ‘what’s going on here?’ I couldn’t believe how bad some of them were. I remember thinking ‘I’m better than all these players’.
“That’s not disrespecting to them players but some of them just weren’t good enough and should never have played for Everton.”
Rooney left Everton in 2004, but his exit was not handled well, and he does not look back on it favourably. Rooney acknowledged that he would have loved to remain for an additional year, but an attempt to sell him to Chelsea damaged his connection with the team.
“From my point of view, ideally, I would have liked to have stayed for another year and see where we went from there,” he said. “When the [2003/04] season finished, the club had tried to do a deal with Chelsea for me, without me knowing.
“When I found out, I was fuming. I remember speaking with my agent and telling him that if they’re going to sell me, I should have a say in where I go. I don’t want to go to Chelsea. I didn’t want to leave at the time but once I knew they were trying to sell me, I thought ‘ok’.
“I injured my foot at the Euros and went on holiday afterwards. When I came back, Everton wouldn’t let me train, in case I got injured, because they wanted to sell me. I left and took a lot of stick over leaving but I don’t think the club were too innocent either.”