Wayne Rooney set out his preferred Premier League five-a-side while also using a half-an-hour long Q&A session to reflect on career highs and regrets. He deliberately named no current Manchester United players in his selection.<\/p>\n
On his first pick Rooney said: “Phil Foden, definitely,” Rooney said almost instantly and without hesitation with his first pick. “Five-a-side, Phil Foden, tight areas, brilliant.” He followed that up by adding: “Probably Cole Palmer as well in there,” Rooney continued. “[Bukayo] Saka, I\u2019m not having a goalkeeper. I\u2019ll put [Mois\u00e9s] Caicedo in there, he\u2019d be the defensive one but he can attack as well.” His final selection came from Liverpool: “Mo Salah. So yeah, that would be my five players,” Rooney finished.<\/p>\n
The group Rooney assembled draws from teams across the league, including players who represent Man City, Arsenal and Chelsea, and a Liverpool forward.<\/p>\n
Rooney also assessed his own career in the session. He described the FA Cup trophy he conquered as Man Utd captain in 2016\u2014the only FA Cup triumph of his career\u2014as the biggest achievement of his nearly 20-year career. By contrast he identified one major regret from international duty. On the 2006 World Cup he said: “[My biggest regret] Going to the World Cup in 2006,” Rooney said. “I wasn\u2019t fit, I shouldn\u2019t have went. And it ends with getting a red card . So yeah, if I went back I probably wouldn\u2019t have gone.”<\/p>\n
The 2006 tournament was also a difficult personal moment: Rooney failed to tally a single goal involvement in four World Cup appearances in 2006 and was sent-off in the quarterfinals before England lost in a penalty shootout. The Q&A underlined how Rooney balances admiration for the current crop of Premier League talent with frank appraisal of his own career milestones and mistakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rooney named a five-a-side Premier League XI and reflected on 2016 FA Cup and 2006 World Cup regrets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,172],"tags":[826,319,1210],"class_list":["post-4177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","category-epl","tag-bukayo-saka","tag-cole-palmer","tag-five-a-side"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}