May 2001 was a turning point for Arsenal. They had lost the FA Cup final 2-1 to Liverpool, when the terrifying pace of a young Michael Owen had magnified a weakness in Arsène Wenger’s defence. A week later their season petered out altogether with a 3-2 defeat at Southampton as they succumbed to Matt Le Tissier’s late winner, the final goal at The Dell. Wenger would spend much of the summer prising Sol Campbell from Tottenham as the manager set about rectifying his squad’s flaws and moulding the next Premier League champions. After Southampton, Arsenal would not lose another league match on the road for 17 months, until a 16-year-old from Croxteth spectacularly thumped one in off the bar.

If you can remember a world where Wenger signed players with the express ambition of winning the league, you may also be able to picture a fresh-faced David Moyes. In March 2002, as Wenger closed in on his first title since 1998, a different sort of transformation was beginning at Goodison Park with the appointment of their highly-regarded new manager. Everton would enjoy a period of remarkable stability and over-achievement under the Glaswegian.

On arrival Moyes had talked passionately about the city of Liverpool, about moving to a place not unlike his home city. “I am joining the people’s football club,” the then 38-year-old proclaimed. “The majority of people you meet on the street are Everton fans.” And perhaps he saw his roots in a teenage Wayne Rooney, a working-class kid he would later describe as “the last of the classic street footballers.”

Moyes certainly saw sheer, unfettered talent. He says it was actually a mesmerising solo performance against Leeds United two weeks after beating Arsenal that truly convinced him Rooney was going right to the very top, as Harry Redknapp would put it, but he also pinpoints an earlier moment when he and his coaching staff first realised they had an exceptional player.

In one of Rooney’s first training sessions with the senior side, the forward picked up the ball close to the byline, stepped away from a defender and flighted a delicious chip into the far corner. “All the staff were watching and you could see them all look up the line at each other,” Moyes remembers. “They all had the same look on their face: Did you see that? Did that really happen? Everyone turned and looked. No one shouted: ‘What a goal!’ Maybe everyone was wondering whether he really meant it. But he did. From that moment we were all thinking: ‘Wow, what a player. What a player we have.’”

Keeping the lid on

David Moyes was cautious with Wayne Rooney in the striker’s debut season, mainly using him from the bench. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

On the opening day of the 2002-03 season Everton hosted Tottenham, and Moyes decided to give Rooney his debut from the start. For most it was their first glimpse. The away fans gave him plenty of stick, chanting: “Who are ya?” whenever the stocky teenager touched the ball (It made a mark. Rooney wrote in his first book: “They don’t sing that at me anymore. They just boo and chuck abuse and slag me off instead. Funny that.”)

Moyes kept his wonderkid out of the spotlight in the following weeks, using Rooney mostly as a substitute. He would come on with 20 or 30 minutes to go, play well with an assist here and there, as well as the odd yellow card for a meat-cleaver tackle or insulting the officials – at least Moyes knew he wasn’t shy. Then, on 1 October, Everton played Wrexham away in the League Cup. Rooney came off the bench and scored twice through the goalkeeper’s legs in a 3-0 win to become the then youngest goalscorer in Everton’s history. Rooney had arrived and Moyes couldn’t keep the lid on much longer.

Two and a half weeks later, Arsenal came to Goodison. The champions were top of the table after seven wins and two draws and hadn’t been beaten in 30 league games. This was now a formidable Wenger team in which Freddie Ljungberg buzzed around Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry led the line and Patrick Vieira roamed in front of a rearmoured defence led by Campbell.

The days before, however, had been catastrophic for one Arsenal player. England were playing Macedonia in a Euro 2004 qualifier at St Mary’s, and after 11 minutes the visitors won a corner. Artim Sakiri delivered a devilish inswinger with his left foot. It went flat and hard over the six-yard-box rabble before bending back and homing in on the top of David Seaman’s far post, and rebounding into his net. Looking back it was nigh on unsavable but Seaman was pilloried nonetheless. It probably didn’t help that he’d been bamboozled a few months earlier in similar fashion during the World Cup quarter-final. The press came down hard and it would be his final international game.

Because of the national debate over his England place, Seaman came into the Everton match under great scrutiny – despite Arsenal’s form – so when he flapped at Mark Pembridge’s early corner the Goodison crowd let him know about it. A few moments later they were silenced. David Weir slipped in his own six-yard box making a mess of a clearance, and Ljungberg reacted first to slot into the empty net and give Arsenal a seventh-minute lead.

Everton responded well and were level 15 minutes later when Lee Carsley’s shot clattered a post and fell to Tomasz Radzinski. The forward jinked away from Pascal Cygan before beating Seaman to equalise, and it stayed 1-1 until the break. Arsenal dominated the second half; Wenger brought on Sylvain Wiltord who hit the upright, and Henry and Ljungberg both had clear sights of goal but missed the target. Goodison was getting anxious. After 80 minutes, Moyes turned to Rooney.

His first action was to harass Campbell into giving up the ball. The fans were lifted by his enthusiasm but it was still Arsenal making chances. Another went by, Wiltord firing over the bar. Then, as the clock ticked over 90 minutes, Richard Wright thumped a goalkick downfield and Campbell headed it back to the halfway line. As the ball fell to Thomas Gravesen and he hooked it on, there was no indication of what was to come, that Arsenal’s unbeaten streak would be over in four teenage touches of a football.

‘Fancies his chances …’

Rooney spins towards goal with his second touch as Lauren and Arsenal back off. Photograph: Shaun Botterill/Getty Images

“Rooney. Instant control,” says Clive Tyldesley on the commentary as the forward plucks the ball out of the sky with his first touch, 40 yards out. Aware of Lauren backtracking, he pulls the ball away from goal and uses his second touch to spin himself almost 360 degrees back towards Arsenal’s retreating defence.

Kevin Campbell never gets the memo. Had he known what Rooney had in his mind, Campbell would probably have stood hands on hips ready to ball out the cocky sod for not playing in the senior pro. Instead, Campbell senses an opportunity and bursts into the inside left channel. Just as he reaches the gap between Lauren and Sol Campbell, he glances back over his right shoulder – one fast pass and I’m in – to see a wilfully oblivious Rooney knock the ball a few yards ahead for himself. Campbell can’t hold his run and sprints offside but his surge has pinned Arsenal’s defence back a crucial yard.



Rooney accelerates after his third touch and glances up. For a boy to shoot from here, against the champions, this must be confidence, an instinctive all-consuming surge of self-belief, built by those League Cup goals against Wrexham and hundreds of youth goals; and in the park, on the streets and up against the shutters of the nursery opposite his parents’ house.

Suddenly he slows down, eyes momentarily transfixed on the goal. Sol Campbell and Lauren both realise he is about to attempt something audacious. As Rooney raises his left arm towards the clouds and wraps his right foot across the ball, so does Tyldesley, sounding a smidgen put-out by the insolence of it all: “Fancies his chances … !”

Thierry Henry congratulates Rooney at the end of the match. Photograph: Mike Egerton/Empics

The technique is exquisite. Rooney lands on both feet and in the brief moment the ball takes to curl around Campbell’s outstretched leg and reach the crossbar, he simply watches like the rest of us. Seaman throws up his left hand but Rooney has found the tiniest corridor of certainty, an inch above the goalkeeper’s glove.

There is some universally shared satisfaction about goals that hit the underside of the bar. Perhaps it’s the moment all doubt is emphatically extinguished as a spread-eagled goalkeeper looks back, still hopeful he can scoop the ball to safety, only to see it spring into the net with an extra jolt of power. Goals off the bar don’t only cross the line, they sprint into the endzone and dance all over it.

“Oh, brilliant goal! A brilliant goal!” shrieks Tyldesley as the ball crashes home. As Rooney sprints away what must he be thinking? He is not yet a signed-up professional, still on £75 per week, the work-experience boy strolling into the office, ripping the lid off a USB stick with his teeth and giving a groundbreaking presentation on how to increase productivity by 40%. Maybe he is thinking about how best to celebrate. Do I jump, do I punch the air, do I stand and soak it all up? In the end he does a bit of all three.

On the sideline Moyes gives a hop, skip and jump of his own back to the dugout. The Premier League has a new youngest goalscorer, and he has done it against the champions with nonchalance. “Remember the name: Wayne Rooney!” The 16-year-old who had fancied his chances would go on to render that advice rather redundant.