Wayne Rooney, the Premier League footballer who ushered in Manchester United’s most recent Golden Age, is coming to D.C. United. Thursday morning, Sky Sports reported a deal to bring the English forward to Washington has been agreed for £12 million (about $16.2 million). Barring what reports call a radical “change of heart,” the deal will almost certainly be signed.
Soccer Twitter met the initial rumor of the transfer, first reported by the Washington Post on Tuesday, with understandable skepticism. Transfer rumors are basically a cottage industry in countries where soccer takes up more conversational and media space. That Rooney would leave his boyhood club of Everton, where he currently plays, to live in the US is a classic case of “Huge, if true.”
And this is going to be huge. Rooney’s deal at DCU will run through the end of the 2020 Major League Soccer season. When it’s confirmed on July 10, Rooney will become the highest paid player in the club’s history. And this opportunity to buy couldn’t come at a better time as the team looks forward to bringing in more revenue from a new stadium at Buzzard Point.
So, to help you get excited, here’s 60 seconds’ worth of trivia to help you get to know the new all-star next-door.
Wayne Rooney is both Manchester United and the English national team’s record goal-scorer.
Rooney has always been expensive. Right now, he’s on the verge of becoming the most expensive acquisition in DCU’s 22 year history. When he was first put on the market, he was the most expensive teenager for sale in the history of the Premier League.
Wayne Rooney was the youngest player to ever score a Premier League goal when he scored as a 16-year-old.
He’s married to his childhood sweetheart, Colleen.
Wayne Rooney does not always not have affairs, and that’s why people shout “Fat Granny Shagger” at him. Rooney admitted to having sex with prostitutes (after being caught entering brothels on CCTV) and publicly apologized to his wife, who was pregnant at the time. One of the women he allegedly had sex with during this period was a 48-year old grandmother known as “the Auld Slapper.” It’s unclear if this is true, but there’s a long tradition of hurling insults at opposing players in the Premier League, as demonstrated by the fans singing “You’re just a fat granny shagger” in this clip:
Wayne Rooney went prematurely bald and got a hair transplant, which is a completely sensible move. Then he wrote the most candid tweets about it, which was unexpected.
Just to confirm to all my followers I have had a hair transplant. I was going bald at 25 why not. I'm delighted with the result.
— Wayne Rooney (@WayneRooney) June 4, 2011
Hi all there's my head. It will take a few months to grow. Still a bit bloody to. But that's all normal. #hairwego http://t.co/Bd1M4TW
— Wayne Rooney (@WayneRooney) June 6, 2011
Amanda has contributed to Washingtonian since 2016. She has written about the right-wing media personality Britt McHenry, chronicled her night with Stormy Daniels, and come clean about owning too much stuff. She lives on H Street. She can be reached at [email protected].
