Wayne Rooney has revealed what he earned from the biggest contract of his illustrious playing career with Manchester United, 10 times the salary of one his most esteemed former colleagues.
Rooney burst onto the scene with Everton at the age of 16 and was effectively a megastar of world football by 18 once he’s starred for England at Euro 2004 and become the sport’s most expensive teenager upon sealing a £27 million ($35.3 million) transfer to Old Trafford.
With the explosion of the Premier League’s international appeal and the associated riches that flooded into English football like never before, Rooney was automatically positioned to ultimately command much larger wages than his older teammates had in their respective primes.
It is why his revelation that his most lucrative contract paid as much as £17 million each season got such a stunned reaction from the likes of Gary Neville and Roy Keane on the latest episode of the podcast on network this week.
The topic was being discussed because Neville had previously promised to bring in a box containing various old Manchester United and sponsor contracts from his career that spanned 1992–2011.
At his peak, Neville in 2001 signed a contract worth £1.5 million per season, just under £30,000 each week. Keane’s landmark contract as the highest paid player in British football history at the end of 1999 had been worth £50,000. The former midfielder’s best ever deal a few years later was around double that, an annual salary in the region of £5 million.
Also sitting around the table, Jamie Carragher explained that he earned £3 million on his best Liverpool contract, while the most lucrative deal of Ian Wright’s career was worth £1.25 million annually from his brief spell at West Ham United—Arsenal paid him less, despite club legend status. It was, however, a different era, while Wright also regretted his agent’s lack of negotiating skill.
Rooney’s £17 million deal, the equivalent of around £325,000 per week, is not believed to be the one he signed in the wake of questioning Manchester United’s ambition in 2010 and asking for a transfer. Rather, it was the five-year contract he committed to in February 2014 at the age of 28 and arguably already on the downslope of his career.
“It was changing then,” he said in response to the shocked faces, who had all retired prior to 2014 and were at the peak of their careers a decade or more earlier.
