The first thing you notice when Wayne Rooney walks into the room is his physique. Three months short of his 30th birthday, the Manchester United captain looks lean and focused as he prepares to lead his side into the 2015-16 season. Some footballers, especially in preseason, are bouncy and overexcitable, like kids on their first day back at school. Rooney is more like a boxer before a big fight. He's polite, but businesslike. He wants to get started.
"I'm as hungry to do things and win things as I was when I was a young boy," says Rooney, who talked to ESPN FC during two interviews this July. "If I wasn't ambitious about winning things, I might as well quit now."
Two years have passed since the departure of United's long-serving manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, and the Scot's final Premier League title in 2012-13 remains the most recent major addition to the club's trophy room. After a difficult season under David Moyes, during which the club missed out on the Champions League, the hangover is lifting.
United endured a topsy-turvy first campaign under Louis van Gaal, returning to the top four, but only occasionally finding their groove. Success was punctuated by injury crises, formation tweaks and personnel changes, as the new manager tinkered with his new team. Van Gaal has overhauled the squad this summer, too. Bastian Schweinsteiger and Memphis Depay are among those who have come to Old Trafford and, in total, the club has spent almost £300 million in the last year. Several others, most notably Robin van Persie, have moved on.
Amid all the turnover and tumult stands the team's captain. Rooney has been at Old Trafford for almost 11 years; of the rest of the likely starters vs. Tottenham when United kick off their campaign on Aug. 8, only Michael Carrick, who joined in 2006, has been at the club for longer than five.
A centre-forward during his formative years, more recently Rooney has been deployed in a number of positions, including on the flanks and in centre midfield (you'd be forgiven for expecting to see him suit up in defence given his versatility). But Van Gaal has made it clear that this season Rooney will return to the position he loves most: striker, the focal point of United's attack. It's a responsibility he relishes.
"When I was younger, I was a bit more off the cuff in terms of how I played the game," Rooney says. "I think now I can read the game a lot better, my understanding of the game is, I feel, a lot better. Obviously with playing in many different positions, I feel the understanding of my teammates as well, when they're in them positions, is better so I think I can read the game more and I feel like that can really benefit me."
This could be quite a season.
To cement Rooney's importance at Old Trafford, one of the first things Van Gaal did after being named manager in the summer of 2014 was to anoint Rooney his captain. As Netherlands' coach, Van Gaal had Van Persie as his on-field leader at the World Cup just weeks prior, but was quick to install Rooney.
"I think it's a big responsibility to take on," Rooney says of the role. "It's great that the manager has trusted me to be the captain of the team. It's something I'm proud to do, I want to do and I want to be successful in doing it. I think as football progresses, you lose players, players who have come to the end of their career and have retired from football and then naturally it's on us experienced lads to take over from the lads who have done it before."
"[Rooney has] been fantastic for years and years and, since he took the captaincy, has been brilliant -- he was a leader on the pitch even before he got [the armband]," Ashley Young told ESPN FC. "He's a massive character who plays with his heart on his sleeve and puts in 110 percent in training and the games. I'm delighted to have him as a captain."
So what, exactly, does Van Gaal expect of his captain?
"To show a good example to the players, which I always try and do, and to be a leader," Rooney says. "The manager can't go on the pitch, so I need to be someone who is passing on the messages that he has. I have always said that I wear the armband but there's different captains in the team in different ways. You have got Michael Carrick, who is more of a calming influence with the players, and Ashley Young, who gets on really well with everyone."
Van Gaal is not easily impressed at the best of times but has clearly been taken with the way that Rooney has conducted himself, both in games and in training sessions. Speaking in San Jose, California, during the club's recent U.S. tour, he was effusive in his praise of his skipper: "I could not expect more. I think he is a great captain, better than I had expected."
Van Gaal is increasingly central to everything at Old Trafford. In contrast to Moyes, for whom the United job often looked too big, the Dutchman has imparted his personality throughout the club. He has a blunt, straight-talking style with the media and is similarly to-the-point with his players.
"He's very honest every day at training," says Rooney of his manager. "If you train well, he'll tell you. If you train badly, he'll tell you. We have to stick to his tactics and how he wants us to play but, as a player, you want your manager to be honest with you, and I think every player in the squad knows where he stands."
Right now, Rooney forms the fulcrum of United's plans. Expectations are high: Anything short of a serious title challenge will feel like a failure given what the team has spent in the transfer window. Rooney is ready.
"[Last season] we could see that we were getting better gradually, but we just needed that consistency in our performances and then, obviously, in results," he says. "But we could see in each game we were getting better. I feel this season for the first time, rather than the last two seasons, we're ready to challenge again."
The first major hurdle, beyond starting the Premier League, is Europe. Last season was the first time in 19 years that United missed out on the Champions League, but their return to the competition will make for a welcome, if busier schedule. To reach the group stage in September, Rooney & Co. must win an August playoff, with Lazio and Monaco among their potential opponents.
"We'll see who we come up against in that game and hopefully we can get through that and be in the Champions League and we'll be ready for the group stage," says Rooney. "It's something you want to play in. It's a massive competition. It was a shame that we weren't in it last year and that's why it's so important that we made sure we were in it this year and hopefully we'll do that and have a good run in it."
Rooney was a member of the United team that won the Champions League in Moscow in 2008 but has since been on the losing end of two final defeats, both to Barcelona. Of the two, the 2011 loss at Wembley -- in which he scored United's equalizer with a curling 15-yard shot before Barca went on to win 3-1 -- hurts the most.
"Losing the final is difficult," he says. "You're so close to winning it and to lose twice to Barcelona is hard to take really. I think you sometimes have to hold your hands up and say they were the better team -- the best team in Europe -- and it was going to be difficult for us to win the game. I'd say probably the game at Wembley, being there, it would have been nice to have won the Champions League there."
Almost 13 years ago, on a crisp October afternoon at Goodison Park, Rooney burst into the public consciousness when he whipped an unstoppable, last-minute shot past David Seaman to seal a most unlikely win for Everton against then-champions Arsenal. Seaman, pony-tailed and increasingly sluggish, was the past. Rooney, 16, the future. There was never any doubt that Rooney would make the grade. Anyone associated with Everton already knew that. They had seen Rooney, born in the working-class Liverpool suburb of Croxteth, come through the ranks at the Merseyside club, imposing himself at every level.
"When I first joined Everton I was captain of the academy team I was in," says Rooney. "Then I played a few years up so those teams had their own captains. But I've always felt I have been a leader on the pitch and there are different things you learn off the pitch in terms of round the dressing room and the training ground, which you develop over the years."
He made his debut for his country in 2003 and was a revelation at the European Championships the following year. Had it not been for his injury in the early stages of the quarterfinal with Portugal, England might very well have progressed to the semifinals and beyond.
A household name at the age of 18, Rooney put in a transfer request at Everton later that summer and left Goodison Park for a fee of £25.6 million. Any argument that this was too much money to pay for a teenager was obliterated when he scored a hat trick in his United debut against Fenerbahce in the Champions League.
Rooney had arrived at Old Trafford one year after Cristiano Ronaldo and with United in a state of flux. Returning assistant manager Carlos Queiroz was intent on adapting the team's shape and, after winning eight league titles in 11 seasons, the championships suddenly dried up. But after a three-year drought, United bounded forward into a glorious new era and won five of the next seven, with the 2008 Champions League thrown in for good measure. Rooney has a medal collection to rival almost any non-Barcelona player of his generation, including his former colleague Ronaldo.
You wonder how many more goals Rooney might have scored had he always played up front. As he and Ronaldo developed and matured together, the trophies came thick and fast. More often than not, Rooney was sacrificing himself for the cause, doing the running for the Portuguese, dragging defenders away. When Ronaldo left, Rooney was restored to front and centre. He responded with 26 goals in 32 league games in 2009-10, more than he had scored in the previous two league seasons put together.
There were more issues to overcome. Rooney was linked with a move away from Old Trafford in 2010 and 2013, the latter coming at the end of Van Persie's debut season. The Dutch striker scored 25 league goals and seemingly carried the team to their 20th title by himself, while Rooney was often shunted to other positions. Now, with Van Persie gone, the captain stands alone up top once more.
Rooney is rapidly approaching landmarks for both club and country. His winning goal for England against Slovenia in June was his 48th at the international level, equaling Gary Lineker's national record and leaving him one shy of Sir Bobby Charlton's all-time mark. Less noted is Rooney's stealthy rise up the Manchester United leaderboard. With 230 goals in 479 appearances, he is third on the club's all-time scoring list, seven behind Denis Law and 19 behind the leader, Charlton.
As captain, Rooney is able to draw heavily on the experience of a long career. During his formative years, both with Everton and United, he played under skippers such as Kevin Campbell, Duncan Ferguson and Roy Keane. Tough and uncompromising, all three taught him a great deal.
"I was always quite vocal and the good thing about those players was that they weren't captains who said their piece and that was it," Rooney said. "You always had your own voice, which you could say back to them with your ideas as well. That was something I learned from and I've just tried to pick up things which I feel have been right for me and then do it my own way."
When asked about other captains from whom he has learned, Rooney says, "I think on the pitch probably Steven Gerrard is the one you look at. In difficult situations he has been a leader. Off the pitch, Gary Neville was fantastic for the players and made sure everything was organized. Other lads like David Beckham and Nemanja Vidic were great captains in their own way."
Rooney's "own way" has included moments of pregame oration. In March, Van Gaal gave part of the credit for United's win over Tottenham to a Rooney team talk. Weeks later, the captain delivered another speech that, according to teammate Daley Blind, helped turn the tide on United's poor record -- they had lost the four previous derbies -- against Manchester City.
"Everyone knew how important this game was because of the history of the last four games," Blind said. "And Wayne Rooney mentioned that just when we got outside and I think everyone is sharp at the point and before the game but it brings a little bit extra more feeling with it."
United beat City 4-2, but Rooney is a little bashful on the subject of inspiring the troops. "I think as a captain I felt it was the right time to do [it]," says Rooney. "We had a bit of a bad period and I felt I had to address the team and try and get us back into winning ways. I've done it a few times and after every time I've done [it] we've won the game, so there might be a few more this year."
Rooney clearly embraces the added responsibilities that come from being a captain. "If the players want something, you are the one who has to go to the manager and ask the question," he says with a smile.
But more than that, he's helping the younger players in much the way he was helped coming up through the ranks, drawing on those experiences -- and learning from them.
"We see them from 16 up to first-team level," Rooney says. "We see them every day at lunchtime or in the gym. You chat with them and that really eases the pathway for them to come in. For instance, when I was at Everton, the youth teams trained at a different training ground so, if you got in the first-team squad you would change training grounds and were just thrown in with the first team.
"Different players have different characters, so I think it's important that, if they want to speak up, they can do. Our young players do that, they're a good bunch of lads and are certainly not in awe of the senior players. The main thing for me is making [sure] all the players in the dressing room are happy and settled. Once you have that, it will show on the pitch."
Teach as he may, though, it doesn't always go according to plan. Last September, for example, Rooney's goal-scoring performance in a narrow 2-1 win over West Ham was overshadowed by the red card he received.
"I felt I let myself down although actually I was trying to take a yellow card," says Rooney. "The other team were counterattacking and you try and take a yellow card but, unfortunately, I just caught Stewart Downing a bit too high. I felt I let myself and my teammates down and whether I am captain or not, when you leave your team with 10 men you feel like you have left them in a difficult position."
Even before he was made captain of club and country, Rooney endured a level of personal scrutiny that few players will ever experience. It is something he shared with one of his former England captains, Beckham, whom he counts as a great help in learning to deal with such attention. Now, as a leader, he passes on the advice he received as a young player.
"I can obviously help players with that. It's important that the players don't get carried away with the bit of success or fame they've earned and it's important that they keep concentrating on their football," Rooney says. "The better they do that, the more headlines they're going to get which is natural, but the important thing for them to do is keep doing their football, keep practising and then whatever they want to do after that, that will come if they do well on the pitch."
Though, in his own words, Rooney is not "really too fussed on" the extra scrutiny he gets, he is nonetheless an enthusiastic user of social media, running his own Twitter account rather than outsourcing it to his management company. He's the most popular British athlete on social media (more than 25 million likes on Facebook; more than 11 million followers on Twitter) and has a fast-growing global social reach, too. Far from creating problems, Rooney believes the steady release of information can ease media pressure.
"You don't really get reporters chasing round outside your house because a lot of the things that they're looking for are out there already," he says, smiling.
This is Rooney, the elder statesman. As he approaches his 30th birthday on Oct. 24 -- the day before United are scheduled to host City in the Manchester derby, incidentally -- he might be forgiven for taking time to reflect on what he has achieved to date and looking forward to what he wants to achieve in the remainder of his career. Not so.
"To be honest, I have never thought of what I could win in the game," says Rooney. "You go into it a season at a time. I joined Manchester United to win trophies and I have done that, but you want to keep winning as long as you are playing. That is something that Alex Ferguson drilled into every player, and you have got the example of Ryan Giggs, who played until he was 40, which is incredible. Every time you start a season, that's a season you believe you can win trophies."
So has he got 10 years left in him like Giggs?
He laughs.
"I don't know about that, but I'll play as long as I can."
Andrew Hush contributed to this report.