Wayne Rooney stepped onto the red carpet alongside his wife Coleen for the premiere of his new Disney+ series, “The Real Rooneys”, and did so with a visibly changed appearance, having undergone nose surgery and lost a significant amount of weight.
The 40-year-old former England and Manchester United forward was direct in rejecting suggestions that his slimmer figure came from weight-loss injections. “Apparently, I recently saw them saying that I’m using that pen thing,” he told the Daily Mail. “It’s a shame, because I’m working really hard to lose weight. Apparently, they’re saying I’m using the pen.” It was Coleen who, he said, pushed him towards the operation on his nose, after years of putting up with his snoring. “He couldn’t blow air out of one side of his nose, so I got it fixed,” Rooney admitted.
Beyond the physical change, Rooney has been rebuilding a professional life after his playing days. He has taken up television punditry for the BBC, working during the World Cup and on Match of the Day, and described the role as a way of giving structure to his days rather than a source of income. “I don’t do it for money; I do it to have a goal, instead of staying at home all day,” he explained. “There’s a chance I may never coach again, so you have to look ahead… I need a role on ‘The Masked Singer,’ although they’d tear me apart.”
His most recent managerial post was at Plymouth, where he was dismissed in December with the club bottom of the Championship table. Rooney reflected on how differently a coaching career ends compared with a playing one. “As a player, you know when your career is going to end and you can prepare for it,” he said. “On the other hand, in the next stage — that of coach — you don’t know whether you’ll last a year, two, ten or three months… You’re not prepared for when you lose your job.”
Rooney’s standing in the English game rests on a career in which he scored 253 goals for Manchester United, with a notable spell at Everton as well.