Rooney's a knockout with his 'best celebration ever'

16 March 2015 09:26

It’s been all about Wayne Rooney this afternoon, as the Manchester United skipper led his team to a 3-0 victory over Tottenham at Old Trafford. But it wasn’t his goal that got everyone’s attention – it was the celebration.

Rewind to this morning when the Sun reported on footage of Wayne Rooney in his kitchen. Feeling peckish, the England captain was apparently after a knuckle sandwich – expertly delivered by former teammate Phil Bardsley during a mock boxing spar session.

At first Wayne wasn’t best pleased with the footage of his knockout getting out, although he’s pretty used to intrusive media coverage by now.

“It’s in my own home so it’s not in any public place but I don’t know how it’s got out. You know it’s what friends do, we mess around in the house and unfortunately it’s made the front page of the newspaper so we just deal with it.”

A few hours later, however, it was clear that Rooney was happily embracing the now-infamous knockout. After slipping United’s third goal past Spurs he celebrated by punching the air, then collapsing backwards.

Wayne Rooney
(Jon Buckle/PA)

Teammates gathered around Rooney as he lay on the turf, pretending to try to revive the 29-year-old as he feigned unconsciousness.

Naturally Twitter was instantly filled with lovingly photoshopped Rooney parodies. Most of them featured Michael Jackson.

Although there was also this arty rain shot.

A challenge laid down to Italian architecture.

And this one featuring wrestler Randy Orton.

The pundits were also big fans of the striker’s ability to poke fun at himself.

But apart from this stunning celebration, was Rooney at the top of his game against Spurs? We looked at the rest of Rooney’s match… blow by blow.

(Just you wait, these boxing metaphors are only going to get worse…)

Did he pack a punch?

Wayne Rooney
(Jon Buckle/PA)

Rooney was having a relatively quiet game until the 34th minute, when he seized upon a misplaced Nabil Bentaleb pass, burst through a clutch of Tottenham players and slotted past Hugo Lloris – before celebrating by recreating the video, throwing a flurry of air punches boxer-style and then falling backwards to hit the deck.

Having brought the crowd to their feet in that moment, he showed less potency thereafter in his centre-forward role, sending a few efforts off-target, at least one of which he probably should have done better with.

Combinations

Wayne Rooney
(Jon Super/AP)

Very early on, his link-up play was not coming off, a notable example being when he failed to pick out Juan Mata with an attempted cut-back in the box.

He was also not involved in either of the first two goals – but his influence soon grew as he produced several nice touches to help build attacks, as well as getting on the scoresheet himself.

Lasting the distance

Wayne Rooney
(Jon Buckle/PA)

He went the full 90 minutes, and while not exactly a constant threat during that time, he caused plenty of problems for Tottenham in what was a commendable display overall.

Knock-out moment

Wayne Rooney
(Jon Buckle/PA)

Undoubtedly delivered one with the goal and celebration, nicely showcasing his strength, technique and willingness to poke fun at himself all in the space of a few seconds.

Source: SNAPPA