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.
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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 Stick to Football podcast on The Overlap 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.
Gary Neville got injured not long after signing his best-paid contract. / Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images
Although Carragher was in disbelief at Neville’s relative underpayment, given his status within English football and his achievements with Manchester United, Neville explained why he was perfectly happy with the contracts and salaries he had, preferring security and loyalty.
“Money was never a focus for me. I never once worried about the money side of it,” he stressed. “[I thought] if I can get to the end of my career, at 35 or 36, at Manchester United, then I know I’ll be alright. I wouldn’t earn as much money signing these long-term contracts, [but] being a one-club man, being at United, was the right thing to do.
“When they offered me a seven-year contract on lower money, it was better for me than going for three or four years at higher money. I always thought in a more cautious way, if I got injured.”
Shortly after signing the most lucrative contract of his career in around 2007, for £1.75 million per season with a £500,000 signing bonus, Neville did get injured and was pretty much done.
“I’ve signed for £1.75 million, there’s a signing fee on top of that. I then got injured in 2008, out for a year, and my contract ran for another four years,” he said.
“I’m still at Manchester United at the age of 34 because I signed that long-term contract. I had to get to the end of my career at Manchester United [because] I couldn’t see myself in another shirt. I knew when I was 24 and signed a seven-year deal with a renegotiation clause [midway through], they can’t kick me out of this club until I’m 31 … and I’m not leaving. I was locked in and had security.”
Rooney signed the £17 million per year contract in 2014 / ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty Images
One of the factors that was relatively new during Neville’s career was the 1995 Bosman ruling, which allows players to leave a club at the end of a given contract. Keane openly used that to negotiate his two best contracts with Manchester United, essentially putting forward the threat of him walking away and signing with another club as a free agent—it’s commonplace now.
“I admired Roy at the time, and no one in the dressing room thought Roy was out of order for negotiating his contract,” Neville said.
Keane himself explained: “You kept signing long-term contracts, so you never had a good bargaining position. My contract was running out a couple of times, so I got a good bargaining position. It’s not being greedy, it’s self-worth. As a manager, I used to admire the players who’d fight their corner.”
Neville also noted that he agreed with Rooney’s monstrous salary compared to his own, and the fact that his representatives went into negotiations with the intention of getting him the best terms.
Rooney was “right to push the club” for the best contract.
“You were the best player in the world, so you should have been paid the best money in the world, I completely agree with that. I also used to think, as a defender, the lads in midfield and up front were winning us the games every week and should be on a lot more than I’m on.”
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