Rough seas at Plymouth
Wayne Rooney was one of England's greatest footballers. As a football manager, he has been ... not so great
Few people can be happier to see the back of 2024 than Wayne Rooney.
The former Manchester United striker departed his job as manager of Plymouth Argyle on Dec. 31 by “mutual consent,” even though the decision was almost certainly not mutual.
Wayne, I would very much like you to not be the manager of Plymouth Argyle anymore.
OK.
There’s a good chap.
*Jazz hands* Mutual consent!
Rooney, 39, had just been hired by Plymouth Argyle in May, which was itself a bit of a surprise because he was coming off a disastrous run at Birmingham City, where he barely lasted a couple of months. He took over that club when it was in sixth place, steered them to 15th, was sacked, and Birmingham City was relegated out of the Championship to third-tier League One anyway.
And so, Rooney’s 2024 looks like this:
January 2: Fired by Birmingham City
May: Hired by Plymouth Argyle
Dec. 31: Fired Mutual consented by Plymouth Argyle
There were 21 managerial dismissals in the Championship in 2024, according to The Guardian. Rooney was both the first manager to be fired in the calendar year and the last manager to be fired depart within the same year. He was number one and number 21, which if nothing else must be some sort of record.
Unfortunately, that is about it for Rooney’s managerial accomplishments. He started as a player-coach for Derby County in the Championship in the 2020-21 season, and did a passable job there, but the team suffered a major points deduction due to financial shenanigans, they were relegated to League One and Rooney resigned as manager. (He had wisely stopped the player-coach part months earlier.)
The following year he jumped to MLS as a mid-season hire, taking up the manager position at DC United, where he had briefly played at the end of his stellar career. They missed the playoffs to end that season, and missed them again in his first full season in charge. He resigned and returned to England.
Then the Birmingham and Plymouth two-sackings-in-one-year. Not great!
I don’t point all this out to make fun of the guy. I didn’t watch a lot of soccer in his glory years, just enough to know that he was very good for an excellent bunch of United teams and quite good for a bunch of underachieving England national teams — though I defer to the English on whether those teams were good or just overrated. He also had a brutal time with the intrusive British media, which made him a tabloid star from his teens. I’ve watched a couple of documentaries about him in recent years, and he honestly seems like a nice fella. The imaginatively titled Rooney, on Prime Video, presents him as an incredible talent who made some poor off-pitch decisions, usually involving women, drink, or both. It’s definitely from the modern school of athlete-doc in which not too much negative is said, but you do get a sense of how crazy his life must have been at his playing peak, the best English player on one of the biggest clubs in the world.
In Colleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story, on Disney Plus, ol’ Wazza plays more of a bit role in the truly wild tale of a high-stakes legal fight between his wife and Rebekah Vardy, the wife of Jamie Vardy, his teammate on the England squad at the time. Without getting into all the details here, his life would undoubtedly have been simpler had Ms. Rooney just let the matter drop, but he backed her up through the whole process. She had been loyal to him years earlier, and he did her the same courtesy when given the chance. Rather than be a self-important ponce, which is not unusual for high-profile footballers, he comes off as a guy trying to be a good dad and husband as his career winds down.
That sort of willingness to put his head down and do the job has also been a hallmark of his unspectacular managerial career. Rooney probably could have walked into the Manchester United job at various points over the last few years, purely based on his playing accomplishments at the club. But he has instead taken second-tier jobs, and not even particularly attractive second-tier jobs, trying to get some experience and prove himself a bit before stepping up to the big time at United. A couple of his England teammates, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard, jumped into Premier League manager roles with little experience in lower leagues, and both flopped. (Lampard at multiple clubs.)
But if Rooney’s willingness to work his way up was admirable, the Championship has not proven to be a great place to learn on the job. And it definitely isn’t a great place to do so when your club isn’t one of the strongest in the division. Weak squad + neophyte manager = certain doom.
So, what now? A couple of the eulogies for Rooney’s time at Argyle in UK media noted with admiration his apparent drive to be a good manager. That’s where I land: he must really want to be good at this, otherwise he wouldn’t keep trying it. But he’s probably also poisoned the well. How would any club that wants to hire Rooney now sell it to the fans? He’s gone 0-for-4, in a very short time, at his managerial posts.
There are reports that he will have multiple offers for pundit roles on television. Which makes sense. He’s still a big name. Do that for a while, see what happens. The United job, after all, could be open anytime.
Lastly, thanks to the good people at The Line for letting me contribute to their year-end series.
