Wayne Rooney – The Football Interview

Football Daily

BBC

Soccer, Sports, News, Sports News, Sport

4.3 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 16 August 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

England and Manchester United legend Wayne Rooney in conversation with Kelly Somers.

Wayne tells his story of becoming one of England's greatest ever footballers. He shares what home life was like growing up and the single biggest turning point for his career, which came aged 14.

Wayne goes on to talk about life post-football and the challenges he's faced as a manager, most recently at Birmingham City and Plymouth Argyle.

And with having four children, will we see another Rooney play in the red of Manchester United?

Plus, what's the significance of Sister Act? Or The Dubliners? And what has Wayne spent time educating himself on? Hear how he switches off from the unrelenting world of football and how life might have looked different without a career in the Premier League.

Timecodes: 0:23 What does football mean to Wayne? 2:35 Wayne’s first experience of football 3:55 The biggest turning point in Wayne’s career 6:35 What football match would Rooney re-live? 7:28 Life after football, as a manager and pundit 13:55 Growing up in the Rooney household 14:52 The significance of family 18:04 Speaking on his son, Kai’s footballing prospects 21:36 All four Rooney boys 23:07 Favourite sport other than football? 24:31 Wayne’s favourite music 25’22 Favourite film? 26’30 Why does Wayne describe himself as ‘soft’? 26:55 What do people get wrong about Wayne? 28’00 What would Wayne be, if not a footballer?

Football commentaries this week: Saturday 16th August PREMIER LEAGUE: Sunderland v West Ham 1500 KO, live on 5 Live. PREMIER LEAGUE: Spurs v Burnley 1500 KO, live on 5 Sports Extra. PREMIER LEAGUE: Wolves v Man City 1730 KO, live on 5 Live. Sunday 17th August PREMIER LEAGUE: Chelsea v Crystal Palace 1400 KO, live on 5 Live. PREMIER LEAGUE: Nottingham Forest v Brentford 1400 KO, live on 5 Sports Extra. PREMIER LEAGUE: Manchester United v Arsenal 1630 KO, live on 5 Live.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The Football Interview on the Football Daily podcast and BBC Eye Player.
0:06.8	Wayne, welcome along, our first guest on The Football Interview.
0:11.3	This is an opportunity to get to know people, players, yourself a little bit better.
0:16.3	So firstly, the question that I'm always going to start with in these interviews,
0:20.0	what does football mean to you?
0:21.3	Football means everything really, I think.
0:25.4	Since I was a young boy, it's just fell in love with it.
0:27.9	I fell in love with the game, with everything about it and then obviously started to play
0:33.4	it as a young boy. It's all I ever wanted to do, to play football, but that was in the school,
0:38.6	in the house, out on the streets, then for my local team, and then got picked up by Everton.
0:46.8	And the emotion of the game of trying to win and the excitement, it was just a massive adrenaline rush and then I was
0:57.0	fortunate enough to go on and play professionally and have a good long career really. And so yeah,
1:06.0	I think it's, and now I'm living in a different way really as a parent and my children involved in football
1:12.8	so I think it's something
1:14.7	which will always be with me
1:16.2	as long as I'm alive.
1:18.5	We'll dive into all of that during this interview
1:20.7	but talk to me about your first ever
1:22.9	memory of football
1:24.7	when's the first time you can remember kicking a ball?
1:33.3	It will have been when as soon as I can walk, I'd imagine. My mum tells me that, so I can't remember. But yeah, when I was three, four, five, I remember, there was always a ball around the house and kicking it.
1:42.3	And we used to roll up socks as well and play with
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 22 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.