Comment: Rooney’s resignation confirms the sadly superficial times we’ve gotten ourselves into

The name Wayne Rooney is recognised in football by all fans of the sport. His hard work, diligence and dedication have earned him numerous awards. What he hated most of all, however, was the machinations!

A typical example of the previous sentence could be Rooney’s encounter with Cristiano Ronaldo on the pitch, when the Portuguese talent toyed with the very thin nerves of his future teammate.

Rooney didn’t hesitate too long and sent Ronaldo to the ground uncompromisingly, only to find out that this definitely doesn’t apply to him!

Further proof of his exceptionalism was the end of the match between D. C. United and Orlando. Rooney’s team played a corner in the last minute of the game at 2-2, which the goalkeeper came on.

Only, the Orlando players managed to turn it away, and in turn one of their players went on the counter-attack to an empty goal. However, Rooney refused to concede and so he ran after his opponent, slipping the ball away from him, which he then sent from the middle of the pitch back in front of the goal, where his teammates managed to get it into the net. What a game!

And now we finally get to the meat of this article.

“I remember when we had to go to training that day after losing the game. I was still very angry and when I came into the dressing room with Michael Carrick we found Jesse Lingard and Paul Pogba laughing and dancing,” Rooney told Sky Sports in one of his many interviews.

There is certainly nothing wrong with enjoying life and dancing, quite the opposite. But then sometimes when you see Pogba, Neymar and some of the other players walking around the pitch and you see them letting off one tackle after another and falling theatrically after every light contact, it makes you almost sad to see how the times have changed since the old days.

Rooney himself was confronted with this once and very aptly remarked that if players are so incredibly overpaid they can’t have sporting motivation as the financial side of things is so strong that at some point in their careers something will simply slip away.

This is also why the results of a study called the Contract Year Phenomenon, which has been known for some time, are not surprising.

The study examined the performance of players before and after signing a contract. It is logical that a person is worried about his future and when the end of his contract is approaching, he tries much harder than normal to get a new and better offer. Sometimes, however, it’s incredibly eye-popping.

Except that’s not what Rooney and others have addressed. They played because they loved the sport and they loved to win, for which they sacrificed a lot.

Even today, there are plenty of such heartthrobs who put the sport first, but on the other hand, there are plenty who use money, social media and other things to get where they couldn’t go without it because of their lack of talent.

Formula One fans could tell a story…

Source: YouTube, Sky Sports