Wayne Rooney, The Hooker and Why It Shouldn’t Matter to England Fans

September 6th, 2010 | by: Daryl | View Comments

You’ve probably read the Wayne Rooney in Not Very Good Role Model Shock! stories, detailing how the Manchester United and England striker (allegedly) paid prostitute Jennifer Thompson for sex while his wife Coleen was pregnant. Click that link if you want to read a story that’s part Rooney exposé, part advertisement for said prostitute.

Obviously it’s no surprise that the English press is publishing scandalous stories about England players again. It reminded me of something from Ethan’s Rafa Honigstein interview on the England blog. German born but English based journalist Honigstein suggested that German tabloids are just as capable of digging up dirt on German national team players, but are more judicious about what’s worth publishing. Honigstein’s exact line was “Bild have tons of material on people that they won’t use.” I don’t imagine the News of the World or the Sunday Mirror has any material they wouldn’t use. Because scandal sells papers. But in a weird way, this story doesn’t feel like a big deal to me.

We already knew from way back that Wayne Rooney enjoys the pleasures of paid lady company. That’s not news. We know he smokes as well, and we know he sometimes swears at referees. We shouldn’t try and pretend that he’s any sort of role model, and I’m with Rob on the England blog in hoping that Rooney plays vs Switzerland and plays well.

Does that mean I’ve lowered my standards of what to expect from England footballers? Maybe as an England fan I’m now fully desensitized to scandal after the exploits of Ashley Cole, John Terry and others. Maybe the News of the World would have to publish an exclusive revealing that Joe Hart played a pivotal role in starting World Wars I and II and that Frank Lampard Jnr. is actually Satan himself for me to be genuinely outraged at this point.

There’s an argument that footballers are representing their nation and so should uphold certain moral ideals. And I agree with that up to a point. If Joe Hart did start both World Wars or Lampard was Beelzebub, then neither should be allowed to play for England again. But in the case of Rooney, maybe we have to accept that footballers are just people and that people do weird things and make stupid mistakes. If we’re really interested in them as footballers and not just celebrities then we should all be mature enough to just ignore the scandal and go back to watching them play football. And that includes you, English tabloids.