Wayne Rooney

Wayne Mark Rooney (born 24 October 1985) is an English footballer who plays as a striker for Premier League club Manchester United and the England national team.Rooney made his senior international debut in 2003. He played at UEFA Euro 2004 and scored four goals. He also briefly became the competition's youngest goalscorer. He is frequently selected for the England squad and also featured at the 2006 and 2010 World Cups. Rooney has won the England Player of the Year award twice, in 2008 and 2009. As of March 2011, he has won 70 international caps and scored 26 goals.
Aged nine, Rooney joined the youth team of Everton, for whom he made his professional debut in 2002. He spent two seasons at the Merseyside club, before moving to Manchester United for £25.6 million in the 2004 summer transfer window. Since then, United have won the Premier League four times, the 2007–08 UEFA Champions League and two League Cups with Rooney in the team. He also holds two runner-up medals from both the Premier League and the Champions League. In 2009-10, Rooney was awarded the PFA Players' Player of the Year and the FWA Footballer of the Year. As of 2011, he is the third highest-paid footballer in the world after Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, with an annual income of €20.7m (£18m) including sponsorship deals.
Rooney was born in Croxteth, Liverpool to Thomas Wayne and Jeanette Marie Rooney (née Morrey).He is of Irish descent and was brought up Catholic in Croxteth with younger brothers Graeme and John; all three attended De La Salle School. He grew up supporting his local club Everton; his childhood hero was Duncan Ferguson.
Rooney began playing for Liverpool Schoolboys and until May 2010 he held the record of 72 goals scored in one season. At age nine, Rooney played for Copplehouse boys' club in the local Walton and Kirkdale junior league and scored 99 goals in his final season before being spotted by Everton scout Bob Pendleton.Rooney joined Everton at age nine and was the Everton mascot for the Merseyside derby against Liverpool as an 11-year-old.In the 1995-96 season he scored 114 goals in 29 games for Everton's under-10s and 11s, and by 15 years old he was playing for the under-19s.[20] He scored eight goals in eight games during Everton's run to the FA Youth Cup final in 2002.This included one goal in the final defeat against Aston Villa and upon scoring he revealed a T-shirt that read, "Once a Blue, always a Blue." Rooney was included in the first team squad for their training camp in Austria in the summer of 2002 and scored his first senior goal in a 3-1 friendly victory over SC Weiz on 15 July.
Rooney was an unused substitute in Everton's 1-0 away win over Southampton in April 2002. His senior debut came the following season on 17 August in a 2-2 home draw against Tottenham, at this time he became the second youngest first-team player in Everton history behind Joe Royle. His first senior goals came on 2 October as he scored twice in a 3-0 away win over Wrexham in the League Cup These goals meant that Rooney was Everton's youngest-ever goalscorer at the time
On 19 October, five days before his 17th birthday, Rooney scored a last-minute winning goal against Arsenal. This goal ended Arsenal's 30-match unbeaten run,and also made Rooney the youngest goalscorer in Premier League history, a record that has since been surpassed twice by both James Milner and James Vaughan. He scored the only goal in a 1-0 away win over Leeds United fifteen days later.