BiteBack Publishing

The English like their lions rough, not smooth. This is the story of the rise and fall and rise again of Wayne Rooney, a boy from the mean streets of broken Britain – few streets meaner than Croxteth in Liverpool – who lifted himself out of poverty by his footballing genius to play for Manchester United and England. On the pitch (most of the time) a hero. Off it, the centrepiece, with his wife Coleen, of perhaps the most vacuous media soap opera of modern times.

Wayne Rooney was a tabloid angel who became a demon overnight when it came out that he’d been having sex with a PVC-clad grannie called the Auld Slapper. (There’s no serious evidence that ever happened, but on Planet Rooney the truth is stranger than the headlines.) He shrugged off the abuse and carried on scoring goals. Lots of them. He can be bad-tempered and he can use bad language, but there’s no doubting his passion for the beautiful game – and a basic, street-level sense of fair play. Sent off in the 2006 World Cup for a clumsy tackle, it was his club teammate Cristiano Ronaldo who seemed to play dirty, Rooney who emerged the greater sportsman, who graced the game.

Rough, working class, surrounded by an unlikely crew – including a dodgy agent, a crooked lawyer, tarts and gangsters - Rooney’s Gold looks at the characters who have been attracted to the fabulous money Rooney gets for kicking a pig’s bladder around a field. Some of them have tainted his gold. Some of them will not enjoy reading this book. One of them – his agent Paul Stretford, fined and banned for nine months by the Football Association - did his best to stop it. Others have tried to do their best by Rooney. They include some of the brightest lights of modern football, including David Beckham and Sir Alex Ferguson. Of all the contenders to be captain of England at this summer’s World Cup, it is Rooney who has become the model husband and father, Rooney who changes the electricity of a game the moment he walks on the pitch, Rooney who scores the most goals, Rooney who fights the hardest. And that’s how we like our lions.

John Sweeney’s book is certainly no hagiography. Irreverent, hilarious and surprising, Rooney’s Gold is a warts-and-all biography of England’s most famous sportsman and the iniquities of some of those who have sought their pound of flesh. It’s an attack on how Big Money taxes our passion for football and an attack on our moronic celebrity culture. But it is, above all, the story of a boy who, despite all the forces pulling him down, rose up to become a hero.