• England

Rooney: I almost gave up football

As he prepares to play his 100th game for his country, England captain Wayne Rooney revealed that he almost gave up football when 14 years old following a brief flirtation with boxing.

Rooney will become England's ninth centurion on Saturday when he leads the team out against Slovenia in their Euro 2016 qualifier at Wembley.

Had it not been for a pep talk from his old Everton youth team coach Colin Harvey, Rooney could have been working on a building site this weekend, or training in a gym for a boxing match.

After three years of youth team football, Rooney's love of the game had diminished. He did not like being given tactical instructions. He was a street footballer being tamed, in his eyes. Rooney was ready to quit the game, but Harvey talked him round.

"I had stopped enjoying football," Rooney said. "I was being told to do different things that I didn't want to do and it felt like it was too much. It was down to Colin Harvey that I carried on.

"He sat me down and made me fall back in love with football. He said he hadn't seen a player with the talent that I had, so I would be making a mistake if I quit.

"Once he said that, I thought: 'He used to be Everton manager, so he knows the game."'

It was a pep talk that earned Everton £30 million five years later and prevented England from losing one of their greatest ever players.

Rooney stopped boxing. "I would have tried it as a career," he says of his former hobby. Building or landscaping were other potential career routes at the time. Five years later the striker became a phenomenon.

He now has a desire to play for England at the 2018 World Cup nearly four years down the road. Rooney suggested earlier this year that Brazil 2014 would be his last World Cup, but he now could take part in the next edition of the tournament.

He knows his body may not be up to a seventh major tournament in four years' time, but as it stands retirement is not on his mind and he is hopeful of making it to Russia.

"I hope [Euro 2016] is not my last tournament," Rooney said. "It's difficult, especially when you're coming up to 30, to start planning the next four years.

"You have to be realistic and think there's a chance that I might not go to that World Cup, but it's something I would love to do again for England. The Euros could be my last one, but I certainly won't be saying it's my last one.

"You finish playing football at a young age so I never want to cut my career short by deciding not to play for England. I would be more than happy to go if picked."

Rooney will be flanked by his sons Kai and Klay onto the pitch at Wembley, where he will become the youngest Englishman to reach 100 caps.

Rooney will put the commemorative golden cap, which he will be presented wityh prior to kick-off against Slovenia, in a room where he keeps all his memorabilia at his Cheshire mansion. The two-floor room, about 60 feet long, is packed with medals, none of them from England duty.

There have been a fair few lows. The famous sending off in the 2006 World Cup quarter-final defeat to Portugal - "the lowest point," he admits - was followed by failure to fire England to Euro 2008.

In the 2010 World Cup he raged at England fans following the 0-0 draw against Algeria and he missed the first two matches of Euro 2012 after being sent off for a silly kick at Montenegro's Miodrag Dzudovic. It was only earlier this year that he recorded his first World Cup goal, although his efforts were in vain as England crashed out at the group stages.

Rooney stands on the verge of making history. He is about to earn his 100th cap and few would back against him becoming the country's all-time top appearance maker and goal scorer. It is clear to see he feels his ambitions with England are unfulfilled.

"It will be a special moment for me when I get my 100th cap," Rooney said. "It's a great honour and I'm extremely proud.

"I don't just want to be remembered as one of the players who gets 100 caps. I want to be successful and we haven't been successful. That's how teams and players get rated.

"I would say it hasn't always been great, but it has always been magical playing for England."

The ambitions do not stop there; Rooney hinted his desire to take up management once his playing career comes to an end - and would one day like to lead his nation from the touchline instead.

"It would be a big call, at this age, to say I wanted to be England manager one day - but I would love to go into management. I would love to get a job somewhere when I finish playing, hopefully, and see how it progresses from there," Rooney said.

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