Wayne Rooney has revealed that Manchester United manager is his “dream job” despite his fledgling coaching career hitting a hurdle with his swift recent dismissal from Birmingham City.
Rooney scored a club record 253 goals during a 13-year playing career at Old Trafford. He then embarked on the next stage of his football journey by becoming a player-coach at Derby County, before returning to former club D.C. United and then having 83 days in charge at Birmingham.
The former England captain only turned 38 in October and still has potentially decades of coaching and management in front of him. Therefore, he remains optimistic about getting another job and ultimately working his way up to the very top of the game in due course.
“I definitely want to get back into management. The aim is to manage in the Premier League eventually, Manchester United or Everton are the dream jobs, but it’s a process,” Rooney explained while appearing as a pundit on BBC One’s coverage of United’s FA Cup win over Nottingham Forest.
“In the next ten years, hopefully I can be in with a chance of taking one of the top jobs.
“It was a setback what happened at Birmingham but I’m a fighter. You know as a manager part of the job is being sacked and having setbacks and it’s about how you bounce back. Maybe the timing wasn’t right when I went in at Birmingham, the fans didn’t accept me from day one.”
Having seen his time at Derby coincide with major financial problems and becoming the latest D.C. United coach to miss out on the MLS post-season upon his return to America, Rooney was a surprise appointment at Birmingham two days after John Eustace was sacked with the Blues occupying a Championship play-off place. He won only two of 15 games, with Birmingham plummeting towards the relegation zone by the time he was sacked in early January.
Precious few of Rooney’s former United teammates have pursued a career in coaching. Michael Carrick has earned plaudits for his work at Middlesbrough, but the likes of Gary Neville, Paul Scholes, Rio Ferdinand, Patrice Evra, Roy Keane, Wes Brown, and Owen Hargreaves have become pundits.
Robin van Persie is, however, working on his coaching badges and briefly returned to United earlier this year to observe training as part of his UEFA Pro License course with the KNVB.