It was again within the late 90s and early 2000s that speak of a prodigiously proficient striker within the Everton youth crew started to emerge from Merseyside.
Rising via the Toffees’ ranks was a participant who had netted greater than 100 targets in a single season for under-11s and had damaged into their under-19s facet as a 15-year-old.
By the point Wayne Rooney netted his gorgeous last-minute winner for Everton in opposition to Arsenal simply 5 days earlier than his seventeenth birthday to turn out to be the youngest scorer in Premier League historical past, the cat was nicely and actually out of the bag.
Ferguson on Rooney’s rise
Everton boss David Moyes alongside a fresh-faced Wayne Rooney
Duncan Ferguson had a entrance row seat for Rooney’s gorgeous ascent, with the pair sharing a pitch 31 instances for Everton earlier than Manchester United snapped up the 18-year-old for £27million in 2004.
And Ferguson was in little question from day one as to only how proficient the Croxteth-born ahead was, a participant who would go on to attain 53 targets for England , breaking Sir Bobby Charlton’s long-standing file.
Duncan Ferguson performed with Wayne Rooney 31 instances (Picture credit score: Alamy)
“You simply knew immediately that he had it,” Ferguson tells FourFourTwo throughout an unique chat in particular person on the Titanic Resort, Liverpool. “He was actually robust, fast, aggressive – all the things you count on in a prime participant.
“All people knew he was going to have an exquisite profession, and he fulfilled that, didn’t he? He got here from a boxing household as nicely, off the streets. He was constructed like a f**king middleweight champion.”
However is it true that the pair’s relationship goes again even additional and {that a} younger Rooney wrote to Ferguson through the Scotland worldwide’s 44-day stretch at Glasgow’s infamous Barlinnie Jail?
“I feel he could have talked about it years later,” Ferguson continues. “I’m undecided, however they’re an enormous Everton household, and the household in all probability wrote about 10 letters. That’s good. I’ve seen footage of me and Wayne as a child standing outdoors our Bellefield coaching floor.”
Wayne Rooney celebrates a objective for Everton (Picture credit score: Getty Photographs)
FourFourTwo ranked Rooney at no.3 in a listing of the most effective Premier League gamers earlier this 12 months, behind solely Cristiano Ronaldo and Thierry Henry – however what does Ferguson assume?
“He was an important participant – I put him and Shearer as the most effective there have ever been within the Premier League.”
Massive Dunc: The Upfront Autobiography, written with Henry Winter, is accessible now in hardback, eBook and audiobook
