Wayne Rooney’s break from management could become permanent after he accepted another punditry role with Sky Sports.
Rooney is joining his old Manchester United and England pal Gary Neville on Sky’s ‘The Overlap’, posing the question will we ever see him in the manager’s dug-out again?
He found his 83 days at Birmingham, when he won just two of his 15 games as the Blues slid from sixth to 20th in the Championship, bruising and he needed some time away from coaching.
His management career has been proof of the law of diminishing returns and after he received praise for keeping Derby in the Championship in 2021, they were relegated the following season with a massive 21-point deduction.
He quit and took over at MLS side DC United, but that did not go well and he left by mutual consent at the end of the 2023 season, having twice failed to reach the play-offs. Then came the disaster at Birmingham and it is hard to see him being offered more than a Championship job.
Rooney, 38, is not the only former great England player to struggle with the transition to management and Frank Lampard is out of work after his spells at Derby, Chelsea and Everton. Steven Gerrard’s career nosedived when he was sacked by Aston Villa and his successor Unai Emery has done a phenomenal job. Gerrard, currently in charge of Saudi Pro League side Al-Ettifaq, was not even a contender to succeed Jurgen Klopp after looking like a shoo-in to replace him two years ago at his beloved Liverpool.
The game has changed and whereas a generation ago, home-grown players became managers when they retired in their mid-30s, the likes of Eddie Howe, Brendan Rodgers and Kieran McKenna have been coaching from much earlier than that.
The Premier League also boasts the best managers in the world, such as Pep Guardiola and Klopp, making it is increasingly hard for British coaches to get a job.
The Championship is unforgiving and unless Rooney went to a club with the ambition and cash to get to the Premier League, it is pointless swimming against the tide. His future could lie in punditry and he has used his wealth of experience to summarise for Sky Sports and he did well in last week’s Merseyside derby.
His mates Neville, who was a disaster in his brief spell in charge of Valencia, and Rio Ferdinand have forged highly-successful careers as pundits away from the unforgiving world of management and that could be the future for Rooney.
Very few players can compete with his honours and 120 England caps, which give him a unique perspective on today’s game. He’s not the first England legend to struggle at management and Sir Bobby Charlton was poor at Preston while and Bobby Moore hardly pulled up any trees at Southend.
Perhaps punditry is how he can continue his association with the game he loves.
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