People's prodigy takes first wrong turn

Sideline Cut: In English soccer, it can all turn sour very quickly. Just weeks after becoming the new darling of Europe, Wayne Rooney has managed to reawaken the pain and heartbreak of one of the darker episodes in the history of the English game, writes Keith Duggan

The commotion over Rooney's lucrative series of articles in the Sun newspaper leaves a deeply uneasy feeling, a reminder that even a cavalier spirit like Rooney is the product of a game with a murky soul.

The Evertonian teenager's relationship with the definitive English red-top has understandably caused outrage and anguish around his hometown of Liverpool, many of whose people still hold a vendetta against the newspaper since its scurrilous coverage of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.

Shortly after that shocking Saturday afternoon, when 96 Liverpool fans were suffocated and crushed against the wire enclosures on the terrace behind the goalmouth, the Sun ran a series of provocative stories about the behaviour of some Liverpool fans under the heading, "The Truth." In retrospect, the allegations that appeared were scandalously insensitive, portraying Liverpool fans as robbing the pockets of the victims, of fighting and urinating on rescue workers and of shouting lewdly as medical staff worked on a distressed female victim of the afternoon.

It emerged later that the then editor of the Sun, Kelvin McKenzie, decided against the alternative headline of "You Scum" for the edition that contained the contentious portrayals of a group of Liverpudlians left permanently traumatised by what occurred in Sheffield.

McKenzie later apologised unreservedly for the stories but declined Kenny Dalglish's suggestion that the only justifiable apology would be a similarly naked headline declaring, "We Lied."

But McKenzie's apologies sounded hollow and since that time, to carry the Sun around certain streets in Liverpool is to risk disgrace. So the newspaper's apology earlier this week - when it asserted no offence was intended by running its Rooney exclusives - held echoes of the base and animalistic portrayal that the newspaper was willing to inflict upon Liverpool during its hour of grief.

The same vein of cynicism and the fact that it had managed to lure Goodison's favourite son into spilling the goods has provoked understandably bitter and angry denunciations across Merseyside.

The entire turn of events must have left young Rooney in a daze. While his performances for England in Portugal made lucrative off-season media appearances inevitable, the prodigy was shamefully let down by his advisers in accepting the Sun offer, which reportedly amounted to £250,000. Rooney was probably about two years of age when the Hillsborough tragedy occurred. Before this years' soccer festival in Portugal, he admitted his earliest memory of the tournament dates back to the dim and distant days of 1996, when England enjoyed an emotional run to the semi-finals in a sun-drenched tournament that would prove to be Paul Gascoigne's last hurrah.

Rooney is a child of the Premiership. To him, videos of the classic Liverpool/Everton clashes from the mid-1980s must look genuinely and irredeemably ancient: he must view the likes of Kevin Ratcliffe, Ian Rush and Mark Lawrenson in much the same way as those of my generation would have looked at flickering images of Nat Lofthouse. And he couldn't but have noticed how cramped and hostile the stands and terraces looked, with its occupants pinned behind high mesh gates so that you couldn't really distinguish individuals, only a vague mass of people, swaying with bleak collective energy.

England's football stadiums had a remarkably different feel to them in the decade before Rooney came of age: they were edgy, primitive and often dangerous places. Today, the grounds are safe and modern and family orientated and the crowds Rooney has enthralled since his marvellous ascent are part of the spectacle.

For a kid reared in the cradle of Sky television culture, a land so bright there can be no cobwebs or rust in any of the football grounds that feature, the notion of fans meeting their death at a football game must be hard to grasp. But when the Sun offer came up, the appalling nature of what happened at Hillsborough and its affect on the communities close to his own ought to have been spelled out. And he should have said no. Rooney will be guaranteed a volatile reception when next he visits Anfield and in all his future seasons.

And that is the shame of the matter because the great thing about Rooney was - or is - he possesses an unwieldy charm that has managed to transcend local and national partisanship. Even the most unapologetic anti-England soccer fans in this country were a bit besotted by what Rooney did in the group stages of the tournament.

The combination of his utter fearlessness and tender age was something soccer fans all over the world could take joy from. He was getting to live the most basic of playground dreams: here was a mere boy taking ownership of an international soccer tournament purely by his brilliance with a football.

Much was made of Rooney's "lack" of image: that he possessed none of the Latino looks or shine of the figures that were supposed to light up Portugal. But Rooney's sheer ordinariness was the thing that made him so different and appealing. He has the slightly scruffy, impish look of boys that used to adorn the sketches of the Just William books and there was something reassuring about his open, meaty features. Rooney gave the impression he was there for the joy of the game, that peripheral issues like money and materialism did not come into it. He revived the spirits of many jaded football men over those few weeks.

But money must figure somewhere. Rooney has eyes and ears and it must be impossible to spend time in an England training camp without feeling pressure to extract the most for your worth.

It has often been observed Rooney will never match David Beckham in terms of celebrity endorsements. And it is true the notion of a bare-chested Rooney adorning the cover of Vanity Fair is a peculiar one. But from Portugal came the sense the soccer community has grown tired of preening, petulant superstars who promise more than they deliver.

Rooney, looking like he had been plucked from the streets and thrown into the England team, made a mockery of many pretensions by his plain, unadorned feel for the game. And in his own way, he inferred a humbling kind of dignity upon the game.

I guess he had greedy voices whispering in his ear. The Premiership world is fast and furious; already the transfer spins are beginning to heat up as the agents hustle the scene to grab the best deals for their stars. The notion of the club seems laughable in the current climate of rumour and innuendo.

The reason young Rooney was, and is, so likeable is that he stands alone, a stocky teenager besotted with the game and playing for the club of his boyhood.

Comparison have often been made between Rooney and the young Gascoigne, himself - pudgy-faced and distinctly unglamorous. The hope has often been expressed he will avoid making the same mistakes as the Tyneside prodigy.

This week, Rooney took his first bum step and its consequences will be ringing in his ears for quite a while.