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Premier League: How Man United could learn from the Yankees when handling Wayne Rooney

Alex Rodriguez's contract was paid off in full as the Yankees ushered their biggest star out of the door and the Red Devils now face a selection dilemma over captain Wayne Rooney

Premier League: How Man United could learn from the Yankees when handling Wayne Rooney

There was a time when retirement presents tended to involve a carriage clock or an engraved watch. Not any more and not at elite levels of sport. Consider the going-away gift Alex Rodriguez, suspended for the entire 2014 season for his role in the Biogenesis doping scandal, when he left the New York Yankees in August he received $27,103, 825. Or, to put it another way, every dollar left on his contract.

The most famous baseball player of his generation was being paid not to play: not in the remainder of the 2016 season or the entirety of the 2017 campaign. This was sport as big business, emulating the golden goodbyes granted to CEOs who are more likely to be paid off if their results are diminishing.

[TACTICAL REVIEW: UNITED WITHOUT ROONEY AND MORE]

[THE HIGHEST-PAID FOOTBALLERS IN THE WORLD]

It was a huge story in the United States. It only really ranked a mention in news-in-brief columns in newspapers in the United Kingdom. And yet it has a certain pertinence. The American game has an equivalent in the global game. Because Wayne Rooney has football’s Alex Rodriguez contract, a deal of vast length and huge sums of money, one which famous clubs saw as a statement of intent but which always had the possibility to end up as indictments, one which was invariably going to create problems in the future. Now, with Rooney dropped and Manchester United looking better without him, the future may have arrived.

Rodriguez was granted a 10-year $275 million deal in November 2007, which would last until he was 42. Rooney signed a five-year £85 million contract in 2014, which would take a player who debuted at 16 deep into his 34th year. He is only 30 now and undeserving of a place in the team. He may have peaks of form to follow the current trough, but he will not get any better. It was pragmatic of Jose Mourinho, inheriting a player with around £48 million left on his contract, to try and find a way to install Rooney as a first choice, but it has looked misguided. Whether or not it actually was, it looks a footballing decision taken for financial reasons.

[ROONEY WILLING TO SEE OUT CONTRACT AT UNITED]

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The Rooney deal was a great one: for Rooney. Signed in February 2014 when United were seventh in the league and had missed out on a host of signings, their weak bargaining position allowed his agent Paul Stretford to profit. It was portrayed as a triumph for the club. It was nothing of the kind.

But it did bear similarities with certain negotiations in baseball. Rodriguez is an extreme example, but it is a sport where long-term contracts tend to be given while short-termism is prioritised, ignoring the question of how much the beneficiary of their largesse will decline by the end of his deal. With the possible exception of his 33 home-run campaign in 2015, Rodriguez did not offer value for money after 2010. Rooney had a decent season in United’s demoralising 2013-14 campaign, but arguably has not done at any stage since he re-signed.

Wayne Rooney sits on the bench
Wayne Rooney sits on the bench

It is worth underlining the scale of his remuneration. Manchester City have been condemned for over-spending, but there has long been a conviction at the Etihad Stadium that the best-paid player in English football was found at Old Trafford: Rooney, at £300,000 a week. That might bring an expectation that he is the best player in the country, but it is rare that salary and performance are so out of sync with one another.

[MOURINHO 'COMPLETELY TRUSTS' ROONEY]

Which brings the question of how clubs extract themselves from such damaging deals. In the Yankees’ case, their lone option was to pay Rodriguez off. Their only financial saving came in the year he was suspended for admitting to taking performance-enhancing drugs; given that it entailed cheating, there should no quips about Rooney’s requirement for them. Yet his sport enabled him to camouflage his lack of mobility: he ended his days as a designated hitter, with no fielding duties. In contrast, Rooney’s deteriorating physical powers are all too apparent. His diminishing contribution, like Rodriguez’s, can be measured in the statistics.

Many a player has dropped down a level to find another club when leaving United. There has long been a theory that Rooney would finish his career at his beloved Everton. It is all very romantic, but consider the practicalities: not just a salary that dwarfs any paid at Goodison Park but the reality that, even now, Rooney would not deserve to command a place in the Everton team. He is not as potent a striker as Romelu Lukaku or as dynamic a No. 10 as Ross Barkley. He does not keep possession like Gareth Barry or cover ground like Idrissa Gueye in the midfield.

Rooney’s wages are such that they would deter clubs in America or the Middle East, long used as retirement homes by certain old-timers, let alone mid-ranking members of the Premier League. It is only the sudden, vast investment by Chinese clubs that should offer United a chance of finding a taker and Ed Woodward mentioned in February they offer a potential new market.

But if not, or if Rooney is reluctant to leave, United will face a problem when they accept, as the Yankees did, that they need an exit strategy. It is harder to phase out the super-famous, who do not blend into the background or to demote those accustomed to being the first name on the teamsheet to the ranks of a squad player: the examples of Bastian Schweinsteiger and Yaya Toure prove as much. No matter how professional they are, those with claims to greatness can become distractions, forever discussed when managers want to focus on those who are actually playing, blocking the path of players who could represent the future.

Rooney’s waning could give United three years to rue events of February 2014, left only with the sorts of solutions open to baseball’s short-termists: dramatically subsidising wages of declining marquee players to allow others to pick them or to take the Rodriguez option and just pay them off altogether.