Wayne Rooney says he learned from former Liverpool forward Jari Litmanen when he was a youngster.
Derby County striker Wayne Rooney spent the bulk of his career playing for Liverpool’s two biggest rivals, Everton and Manchester United.
But in the Times, Rooney says he admired and copied Jari Litmanen, the Finnish forward who played for Liverpool during the Englishman’s formative years as a young player.
Rooney said: “When I started to study the game, the other players were too strong for me so I couldn’t play striker and (Everton coach Colin Harvey) put me at No 10 and said, ‘Get into space.’ I’d never played that position and watched [videos of] Jari Litmanen; Dennis Bergkamp as well but mostly Litmanen.
“It was strange because it didn’t look too difficult what they were doing. Sometimes it was just standing still. Find space and let the game move around you. There wasn’t YouTube. You had actual [VHS] videos and it wasn’t easy. There’s so much [online footage] now and I’ve spoken to young players — a lot of them actually don’t watch the right stuff.”
Rooney is a born Evertonian and it might be strange to some that he followed a Liverpool forward, especially one who isn’t a particularly famous name on these shores.
But it shows how Rooney educated himself to become one of the game’s elite forwards, even from a very young age.
He just went on to use those skills at the two clubs who are in direct rivalry to Liverpool more than any other, Everton and Manchester United.
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