England and Manchester United’s goalscorer of all time, Wayne Rooney has opened up on his battle with ‘inner demons’ while he stole the limelight as a professional footballer.
Rooney, seen by many as England’s most gifted player since Paul Gascoigne, has never talked about the anger and the pain that he felt through so much of his playing career .
Rooney, now manager at championship club, Derby county has now revealed that he always felt a rage that controlled him while he played but he has finally exorcised his ‘demons’, hence he can now talk about it.
Rooney, 36, speaking in a documentary to air on Amazon prime on Friday, February 11 said;
‘We grew up in a council estate in Croxteth,’ says Rooney, ‘and when my grandad died, I spent a lot of time in my nan’s house on Armill Road. I was almost living with my nan. My mum was looking after me and my two brothers. I know now that we were hard work.
‘There was a lot of negativity in terms of my mum getting frustrated with us as kids, messing around all the time, smashing things in the house and my nan lived in the same road, a few houses down
‘She died just before I made my debut for Everton in 2002. I was really close to her. I was devastated when she died. She was a big character.’
‘When she died, it was a big loss to all the family. She would always buy football kits for me. Loads of the family would spend the day at my nan’s and then, of a night, when everybody had gone, I would go back over to my nan’s and sit up late with her. I used to watch Prisoner Cell Block H with her all the time.
‘My mum and dad never had a lot of money at all. It was difficult growing up there. I was always getting into fights and arguments in that area.
‘To go from that to having to deal with becoming a Premier League player at 16 and an international player was something I wasn’t prepared for.
‘I had never even thought about the other side of being a football player. I wasn’t prepared for that part of life.
