There are ways to announce your arrival on the national stage, and then there is the way Wayne Rooney chose to do so.
The trainee, on just £80, came on against the Premier League's best side at that time and ended their 30-match unbeaten run with a truly outstanding goal—taking the ball down over his shoulder, spinning on it and curling a pinpoint effort that evaded David Seaman's despairing dive as it kissed the underside of the bar on its way into the net.
From The Guardian report of that game:
If it had to end, this was as fitting and captivating a finale as any. Arsenal, untouchable for 30 league matches, are human after all, though they left Merseyside wondering whether the teenager who spoiled that record in a late blur was similarly of this world."He's supposed to be 16," Arsène Wenger winced in disbelief, his normally phlegmatic dead pan wrecked by Wayne Rooney.The Frenchman's team have overcome all comers en route to establishing themselves as the best in the country but they could muster no resistance to the £80-a-week teenager's clever control and blistering 30-yard curler within 10 minutes of his entrance and 28 seconds from the end.
Rooney became the Premier League's youngest-ever scorer with the strike, beating Michael Owen by 149 days. Everyone could see he was destined to be something special, as could Arsene Wenger:
Owen's a complete striker but I didn't see him play at 16, ... At that age, Rooney is already a complete footballer. The guy can play.He's the best English under-20 I've seen since I came here [in 1996]. He can play people in, he's clever and a natural, built like a Gascoigne with his low centre of gravity. And he can dribble—I like strikers who can dribble.
Bleacher Report
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