Wayne Rooney is an English footballer who currently plays for English Premier League club Manchester United and the England national team.

He is the first child of Thomas Wayne and Jeanette Marie Rooney. He was raised in Croxteth with younger brothers Graeme and John, and all three attended De La Salle School. Wayne grew up supporting local club Everton F.C., and his childhood hero was Duncan Ferguson.

After excelling for Liverpool Schoolboys and Dynamo Brownwings, Everton signed Rooney on schoolboy terms at the age of ten. He was part of the youth squad, and after scoring in an FA Youth Cup match, he revealed a T-shirt under his jersey that read, "Once a Blue, always a Blue." Since he was underage at the time and therefore ineligible for a professional contract, he was playing for £80 a week and living with his family on one of the country's council estates.

On 19 October 2002, five days before his seventeenth birthday, Rooney scored a match-winning goal against reigning league champions Arsenal F.C.. In addition to ending Arsenal's thirty-match unbeaten run, it made Rooney the youngest goal-scorer in Premier League history, a record that has since been surpassed twice by James Milner and currently James Vaughan. He was named BBC Sports' 2002-03 Young Personality of the Year.

Rooney made his United debut on 28 September 2004 in a 6-2 Champions League group stage win over Fenerbahçe S.K., scoring a hat-trick along with an assist. One year later, he was sent off for dissent in a goalless Champions League group draw with Villarreal CF in Spain on 14 September 2005, after he sarcastically applauded referee Kim Milton Nielsen when he was booked for a foul. His first trophy with United came in the 2006 League Cup, and he was also named man of the match after scoring twice in United's 4-0 win over Wigan Athletic in the final.

During the first half of the 2006-07 season, Rooney ended a ten-game scoreless streak with a hat-trick against Bolton Wanderers F.C., and he signed a two-year contract extension the next month that tied him to United until 2012. By the end of April, a combination of two goals in an 8-3 aggregate quarterfinal win over A.S. Roma and two more in a 3-2 semifinal first leg victory over A.C. Milan brought Rooney's total goal amount to twenty-three in all competitions and tied him with teammate Cristiano Ronaldofor the team goal-scoring lead.

On 12 August 2007, Rooney fractured his left metatarsal in United's opening-day goalless draw against Reading F.C.. He had suffered the same injury to his right foot in 2004. After being sidelined for six weeks, he returned for United's 1-0 CL group stage win over Roma on 2 October, scoring the match's only goal. However, barely a month into his return, Rooney injured his ankle during a training session on 9 November, and missed an additional two weeks. His first match back was against Fulham F.C. on 3 December, in which he played seventy minutes. Rooney missed a total of ten games and finished the 2007-08 season with eighteen goals, as United clinched both the Premiership and the Champions League, in which they defeated league rivals Chelsea F.C. in the competition's first-ever all-English final.