Where does the time go?

Like many others, I can still vividly remember where I was the moment Wayne Rooney announced his arrival as a Premier League player.

A sunny autumnal October afternoon. The champions of the city. A record undefeated streak came to an end. The birth of a brilliant footballer.

I wasn’t lucky enough to witness it live, but instead that moment was accompanied by groans from my disinterested grandmother as I split the television screen between some drama and Ceefax score updates.

Ways to consume the Premier League have come a long way.

At Goodison Park, Tomasz Radzinski had canceled out Freddie Ljungberg’s opener for Arsenal, and a point looked like a good result for Everton as the clock ticked towards full-time.

Unbeknownst to the impressionable nine-year-old staring blankly at a television screen eagerly awaiting updates to the score, David Moyes has inserted his teenage trump card into the action.

Then it appeared. Rooney 90′.

Rooney?

A childhood football acquaintance that included little more than FIFA games, Merlin sticker books and great Premier League players needed to know more. The radio conversation on the ride home was about a 16-year-old sensation. Hardly out of school. The Sinking Arsenal.

It wasn’t just any goal either. A hopeful hoof from Thomas Gravesen was brought down with velvety softness. As Arsenal retreated, Rooney took aim. The teenager could have been forgiven for running his laces through, but instead he went for precision. David Seaman, fresh from an error for England against Macedonia, couldn’t get close.

In the days that followed, there were hours of attempts to repeat Rooney’s golden goal. A ball thrown onto the roof of the house to imitate the towering fall of Gravesen’s clog, a garden chair placed on the lawn like a kind of four-legged miniature Sol Campbell.

The imaginary voice of Clive Tydsley accompanied each repetition. “Rooney. Direct control. Looking forward to his chances…”

Look, as a nine-year-old you look at a moment like that and you still have the innocent belief that one day it could be you. It even remained a little later, when Rooney shone as a senior at the 2024 European Championship in an England shirt.

It’s only as the years go by that you realize there was nothing normal about Rooney at all. This was a one-in-one generation footballer, born in blue, remarkably, unfortunately, in red.

Today marks the 40th birthday of that once untouchable teenage tyro.

Where does the time go?

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