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His on-pitch triumphs (and off-pitch scandals), her turn as Wagatha Christie … for years, the football power couple have made headlines, despite efforts to keep their lives private. So why are they now about to reveal all on screen?
“If you’d said to me 10 years ago, ‘You’re going to be doing a TV show about the family’, I would have said, ‘No chance’,” Wayne Rooney says. Few would have disagreed. After all, he and his wife Coleen had spent their adult lifetime running away from the public gaze. And not very successfully, at that.
Wayne, a wonderful footballer with the strength of a bull and agility of an acrobat, was often back-page news. He scored 253 goals for Manchester United (overtaking Bobby Charlton’s record), 53 for England (the record until Harry Kane surpassed him in 2023), is still England’s youngest goal scorer (17 years and 317 days), won five Premier League titles, was twice young player of the year and was voted player of the year by both his peers and football journalists in 2009/10.
But it’s the front pages that have caused him the bother. His off-pitch scandals have been even more newsworthy than his on-pitch triumphs. As with his football, he showed a precocious talent for hogging the headlines with stories about drunkenness and debauchery.
As for Coleen, she was happily living life, bringing up their four children at Rooney Mansions until she ended up the biggest news story of the lot. When posts from her private Instagram were repeatedly leaked to the Sun, she took on the role of amateur sleuth quite brilliantly, eventually discovering that fellow footballer’s wife Rebekah Vardy was the culprit. After Coleen outed her on Insta in 2019, Vardy sued and the resultant court case became known as the Wagatha Christie trial (Wags being the tabloid diminutive for wives and girlfriends of footballers). Coleen won the publicity war, the popularity contest and ultimately the court case.
Far from seeking these headlines, the couple would have done anything to avoid them. They regarded the reporting on their private lives as gross intrusions. So why on earth would they now agree to invade their own privacy for a Disney+ TV series called The Real Rooneys?
Well, they say, it’s time to put the record straight. “People have seen us in the papers since we were 16, and a lot of people have made their mind up; that’s him, that’s her, that’s what they’re like,” Wayne says.
What conclusions did they reach? “There was a perception of me, obviously from things that have happened off the pitch. And there’s been me on the pitch – a very aggressive player, certainly early on in my career.” Don’t do yourself down, I say, you were also fantastically skilful. He laughs, bashfully. “I know, but people have a perception of me and it’s hard for them to look beyond that.”
So what do they think you’re like? He grins. “An arsehole, basically.”
You don’t have to spend long with Wayne to see how different he is from the way he is seen by the public. Or perhaps more accurately to the way he was seen, until a gentle, thoughtful and straight-talking Rooney emerged as a Match of the Day pundit. And you don’t have to spend long with Coleen to see how different she is from him: just as likable, but more businesslike. You get the impression that without Coleen around, the kids might not get to school, diaries would be left unfilled and the house un-run.
We’re at a photo studio in London. Coleen is studiously going through the clothes, while Wayne is looking out of the window, studying the primary school kids playing seven-a-side. You sense he’d like to get out there for a kickabout. “You need to be so patient with kids that age,” he says. “All they want to do is score goals.”
Wayne looks fit – much more so than a year ago when he seemed as if he was beginning to let himself go. He’s shorter than you might expect (5ft 9in) and broad, shaped like a nine-volt battery. He has a touch of the superhero about him. Coleen is elegant and smiley; less wary than she often comes across in paparazzi shots.
So what are the real Rooneys like? Coleen goes first. “Wayne is funny and laid-back. He can be a charmer, but can have a short temper. Would you agree?”
Wayne: “Erm, the first three.”
What sparks his temper?
Coleen: “He can be impatient, waiting around for things.”
Wayne: “For you. When we’re getting up to go somewhere, I’m always early. If we’re getting picked up to go somewhere and we’re leaving the house at 6pm, I’ll be ready by 5.15-5.30.”
At what point does he get irritated?
Coleen: “When I’m still running around cleaning the house at 5.30.”
Wayne: “What I say to Coleen is, ‘Why don’t we pretend we’re leaving at 5?’”
Does it work?
Coleen: “No, because I’ve booked the car to go out!” She laughs.
In the show Wayne gets his own back when he goes off playing golf with friends. She calls for him because they’re heading for a break in Scotland, and he leaves her waiting for ages.
“I was just having a bevvy with the boys in the clubhouse,” Wayne says now. “It’s an etiquette of old.”
How long did he leave Coleen waiting?
Wayne: “Twenty minutes.”
Coleen: “It wasn’t. It was a couple of hours. And it was someone he doesn’t even know. It wasn’t a close friend.”
Wayne: “That’s the only time I’ve been late, isn’t it, when you think about it?”
Coleen: “It’s not the lateness, it’s the fact that he didn’t acknowledge it. Like, I’m late, and he knows about it. When I’m late and he’s waiting for me, I will do everything – get the kids’ clothes ready for the next day, cleaning, prepping and then I’ll think, ‘Oh shit, it’s half five, I better go and get myself ready now.’ And he’ll be like, ‘Why didn’t you get ready earlier?’ And it’s because I was sorting everything else out.”
Do they row much? “To be honest, I can’t remember the last time,” Wayne says. “We’ve been on a good run lately, haven’t we? We’ve not had a row for weeks and weeks.”
And when they do row, how bad does it get?
Wayne: “It’s more you shouting at me and me just taking it.”
Coleen: “He goes quiet.”
Wayne: “I’m never going to win the argument. If I start arguing back, it will just continue, so I’m man enough to accept it; let her get it off her chest. I don’t think I’ve ever won an argument with her.”
In the show, one of their boys says when Coleen gets angry with Wayne she throws a shoe at him. Is that true? She smiles. “I think one time I might have,” she says.
Wayne’s fans tend to call him Wazza. His oldest friends call him Jimmy (because as a kid when he scored he’d celebrate with a cartwheel as Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink did). What does Coleen call him? “Wayne.” And when she’s angry with him? “A knob.” She hoots joyously.
You can see why the Rooneys make for good reality TV from the way they talk to each other – squabbling, sniping, loving, teasing, laughing, snarling, falling out, forgiving. Sometimes there have been desperate tensions. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that they’re still together after all they’ve been through. There seems to be a stability to their relationship and a profound understanding of each other.
I ask Wayne what the real Coleen is like. “Very caring, very efficient in terms of what she does for us as a family. She takes care of everything, which allows me to mess around a bit more with the kids.”
Who’s funnier?
“Me,” Wayne says instantly. “You haven’t really got a sense of humour, have you?”
Coleen laughs. “I knew you were going to say that.”
Wayne: “You haven’t. I like silly stuff like Fawlty Towers, Monty Python, Only Fools and Horses.”
She pulls a face: “I don’t find that forced humour funny. I like just natural funny stuff. I’ve got a different sense of humour to him. More everyday, natural.”
Their four boys, Kai, Klay, Kit and Cass, are now 16, 13, 10 and eight. Kai signed his first full-time contract with Manchester United in July and Klay is in United’s academy. Kit and Cass are also promising footballers. Does Wayne think all four could become professionals? “I don’t know,” he whispers, as if not wanting to tempt fate. In the TV series, we see how much of his time is dedicated to coaching the boys or just playing with them on the football pitch in their gargantuan garden.
Wayne and Coleen say they have been offered reality shows before but turned them down. So why did they agree to do it now? As far as Wayne is concerned, it was the right time because for the first time in his life, professionally things were going wrong. After retiring as a player in 2021, at 35, he moved into coaching and management. At each club he struggled in difficult circumstances. In his first two jobs, at Derby County and DC United in Washington DC, he resigned after improving the clubs’ form but not significantly; at Birmingham City he was sacked in January 2024 after winning two games in 15, and at Plymouth Argyle he left in December of that year after winning four Championship league games out of 23.
“I was at a crossroads. Up till then my whole career had been playing or coaching. I knew if Plymouth didn’t pay off that would probably be my last management job. And when it didn’t pay off I had to come to terms with my future probably not being in the dugout.” In practical terms, it meant he’d be around far more for a reality show.
Was it hard to accept that management hadn’t worked out for him? “No, I think I’ve always been good at accepting things. Like when I moved from Man United back to Everton, I accepted quickly that I’m not the level any more to play for Man United, so you’re coming down again. So I’ve been quite good at not hanging round too long, because I’ve seen players play for too long.” He pauses, still thinking about his disappointing management career. “After Plymouth, it was tough, there’s no denying that.”
As Wayne’s management career was coming to an end, Coleen’s professional life was taking off. After dedicating herself to the boys, she decided it was time to do something for herself, and the show follows her as she negotiates herself a women’s clothes range with Primark. It is thought that her deal is worth more than the £400,000 a year contract Wayne now has with Match of the Day as an analyst. While they’ve not reached Posh and Becks’ heights of wealth, the combined fortune of the Rooneys is around £200m, with Coleen now worth an estimated £15m in her own right.
One of the themes in The Real Rooneys is that this is now Coleen’s time, and she jokes that Wayne is lucky to feature in the show. The boys are asked on a number of occasions whether their mother or father is more famous. (The answer is clearly Wayne, but towards the end they say it’s getting closer). Do they really compete with each other over their respective fame? Coleen looks embarrassed. “That’s Disney. That’s not us asking, that’s them. That’s not us at all, no.”
Do they have control of the show’s final edit? “No. I’ve seen bits and bobs,” Coleen says.
Wayne: “I’ll probably wait till it comes out. But I’m not fussed. I am what I am.”
Wayne and Coleen first met when they were 12 and growing up in Croxteth, a working-class suburb in Liverpool. Wayne’s father was a builder’s labourer, his mother a dinner lady at the secondary school he attended. Coleen’s father was a bricklayer who ran a local boxing club, her mother a nursery nurse. He has described his childhood as rough and ready and called Coleen a “goody who did her homework”. She left school with 10 GCSEs, including an A* in performing arts. He did not take GCSEs because his football career had already taken over.
They started going out at 16, got engaged at 17 and married in 2008 at 22, by which time Wayne had already been regarded as England’s best player for four years. (William Hill offered odds of 5/1 that the marriage would last five years or less.) Are they surprised at the way their life has turned out? Football wise, Wayne says he’s not, because he always knew he had the talent. “But I am surprised by the amount of media interest throughout my career, and still now. I wasn’t comfortable in front of cameras; I just wanted to be a footballer. And then Coleen got pushed into the newspapers as well. We didn’t know how to handle it. I just knew football and that was it really. I didn’t have any sort of education.”
“But the thing is we did handle it, and in a way that we were oblivious to it,” Coleen says. “We knew it was happening, but we just carried on with our life. What surprises me now is how we’re still relevant. There are certain things when I think, why would the press want to report that? I think we’re still very private.”
That’s what she found so devastating about the “Wagatha” stories being leaked to the Sun. They followed another family crisis in September 2017 when Wayne was caught three times over the limit driving the car of a woman he had met that night, who was in the passenger seat. It resulted in Coleen leaving home with the children, and moving back in with her parents while she figured out their future. She took a selfie of herself in bed with the boys at her parents’ home and posted it on her private Instagram account. Details of the photo were leaked to the Sun.
Are they surprised their marriage has survived all the media intrusion? “Yeah. It’s very difficult mentally for anyone to survive the level of scrutiny we’ve had,” Wayne says. “It’s very difficult to put into words when you don’t want to go anywhere with your children because you’re bringing the day – which is meant to be a fun day – down. Like when we go to theme parks now and people think you owe them, you have to do pictures with them, when you’re there with your children.”
“That’s been a big part of our relationship,” Coleen says. “On the show, the kids are asked who’s the boss and they say me, but that’s because if we’re out somewhere I’ll go and get a drink from the bar and bring it back. I know if he goes it’s going to be mayhem and I don’t want to be sitting there on my own, so I’ll just get up and do it. It looks like I’m the boss, but it’s because we’re going to have a better time as a family if we do that.”
“Sometimes we’d be at theme parks and they’d take a picture of us on the ride and by the time we’d finished the ride someone’s bought it,” Wayne says. He’s swigging Red Bull from the can as he’s talking. Is their home full of empty Red Bulls? He laughs. “No. I very rarely drink it. I used to when I was playing. Today it’s just to get through you!”
Wayne says he’s learned how to manage himself when he’s out. “When the kids go to football tournaments and there are going to be lots of parents there, I know I’m going to be ambushed. So I have to be ready mentally to take pictures with people, and do it with a smile on my face when all you want to do really is watch your kid play.” Lots of celebrities refuse to do photos, I say. “No, I do pictures because I remember when I was a kid being a fan and going for autographs.”
What’s more, he says, he still knows what it means to be a fan, because he sees it with his own boys. He says the youngest, Cass, is football crazy, but the last thing he wants is Wayne to use his status to get him access to his heroes.
“Cass is a massive Everton fan, and last year he said he wanted to wait outside the training ground for autographs,” Coleen says. “Wayne could go in and go into the dressing room and get them, but Cass wanted to wait outside the training room, so I had to take him.”
Wayne smiles at a memory. “When we were in Portugal on holiday, we took Kit and Cass to play tennis at a campus, and Benzema and Kanté were there training with their Saudi club, so Cass stood outside waiting for them. And he come back with the pictures.” Were they surprised to see you? “They didn’t know I was there.” So you didn’t even say hello to them? “No.” Why? “Cos he’s just a fan.” His presence would have dampened Cass’s pleasure. It’s such a lovely story.
I ask Coleen what advice would she give somebody starting a relationship with a famous footballer? “Well, the bonus for us was that we knew each other before Wayne was a footballer. The biggest thing for us was to stay grounded, and we’ve had really good support around us. The people you have around you are really important because the media can destroy young people.”
How do you distinguish between genuine friends and hangers-on? “We’ve got this with Kai having signed for Manchester United,” Wayne says. “We know who his friends are. He’s joined United and if there’s suddenly a group of people starting to get close to him, you’ll see that. I’m not saying you can’t make new friends …”
The older boys are fully aware of Wayne’s misdemeanours. At 18, the Sunday Mirror reported that he had paid for sexual services with women, including a 48-year-old grandmother in a catsuit. Massage parlours, fetishism, sexism, ageism and a good old-fashioned public shaming – it was tabloid gold. And that’s far from the only time Rooney has found himself in hot water. “We’ve spoken to our kids about lots of things, because there have been things in the newspapers that I’ve done that they’re going to see,” he says.
Coleen: “If our kids ask us questions we’re straight with them. Obviously not when they were little, but as they’ve been growing up we’ve dealt with things and said, ‘This is wrong, you should never do this, but things do happen.’”
“Young kids are going to make mistakes,” Wayne says. “It’s how they deal with that. And it’s when mistakes are made that you see who your real friends are, because they’ll be the ones there to support you.”
In the past, Coleen has said that whenever Wayne got into trouble, he’d been drinking. I ask if he thinks his drinking was related to the pressures of the job? “Yes,” he says. “At the time you don’t realise you’re feeling the pressure as much as I probably was. I wouldn’t go to Coleen and say, ‘You know what, I feel like I’m under pressure to perform for Man United and England.’”
Coleen: “I would say to him, ‘What’s up?’ I’d sense things.”
Wayne: “But I wouldn’t open up. I wouldn’t go to Alex Ferguson, I wouldn’t go to the club. It’s probably easier now, because there are more people you can talk to, to prevent stuff like that. Back then you wouldn’t. So I’d hold it all in and go home and drink. And, at that time, if I was drinking I’d end up making stupid decisions. And that could have cost me my family. Now if I feel a bit down I’ll say to Coleen, ‘I feel shit.’”
Does she tell you when she’s feeling shit? “I’ll see it before she tells me.”
Coleen: “I don’t get down and wouldn’t cope with it through drink the way he did. I would wait until I weighed everything up and then offload on somebody. I don’t want to put my pressures or worries on other people until I feel I have to.”
I ask Wayne if Ferguson, the legendary Manchester United manager, could see when he was down? No, he says, he thinks he masked it. “Somehow I was still playing well and scoring goals.”
Ferguson was famous for giving players the “hairdryer” treatment – a verbal, face-to-face dressing down. Did Rooney ever get the hairdryer? “I got a few of them.” Which was the worst? “Portsmouth away,” he says instantly. “He’s come for me, but he was going for Ronaldo, really.” Why? “Because he didn’t want to do it to Ronaldo, because he couldn’t take it.” Ferguson criticised Wayne for dribbling too much. “Then I’ve gone back at him strong. That was the problem.” What did you say? “I said, ‘Why are you saying that to me when Ronaldo’s the one dribbling with the ball?’” Did Ferguson accept that? “No, he’s come back at me then. I said, ‘OK no problem.’ I’d scored one goal in the first half. I went out and scored another two, so it worked. He knew it would get me fired up, and I played at my best when I was on the edge.”
The show is an amalgam of reality programmes – take The Osbournes, sprinkle it with The Apprentice (Coleen’s budding career as a clothes designer), add a splash of Who Do You Think You Are? (a revelation about Wayne’s genealogy) and you’ve got The Real Rooneys. One interesting thing to emerge is Wayne’s interest in history. The kids tell him he knows everything. Meanwhile he seems to think he’s thick, or at least he believes that’s what others think about him. I ask him why he’s so down on himself. “I signed for Everton at 16 and my interviews weren’t great, and it was put in the newspapers that he can’t read and write, which was not true.”
Why did they say that?
Coleen: “They just tried to label him.”
Wayne: “They realised I hadn’t got an education. I hadn’t even taken GCSEs, so that was what was said.” Did it bother him? “It probably did, yeah. Then a lot of people you meet realise that’s not the case. But there are things like that which I’ve never been able to shrug off.”
Actually, he says, he loves learning new things. “I was playing in a multicultural environment. So if I’m having a conversation with a teammate from a different place and with different beliefs, I wanted to know and hold a conversation on that.”
Coleen: “He’s curious like that. He asks questions.”
As a pundit, he has quickly become popular because of his honesty. Asked what he thought was the best part of the half-time show at the World Cup final, he said: “I’ll be honest, mine was when it finished. I like a lot of them artists, but I thought it was crap.” His comment went viral and became an internet meme.
I ask if he feels more confident talking publicly since becoming a pundit? “No. I’ve actually been confident since my mid-20s in speaking in front of people. I’ve done leadership talks and Q&As in front of 10,000 people. I done one last week in Bangkok, where there were 7,000 people. And in all these things I’ve never gone in with notes, and said, ‘This is the message I need to get out.’” Has he never frozen? “No!” I tell him he’s a freak. “Well, I did once! That was when we got married. That’s the one time I had to read it.”
Coleen says she has always been forthright in saying what she thinks, but the Wagatha Christie case made her more so. She eventually exposed Vardy by posting fake stories to her private Instagram account and restricting access so only Vardy could see them, proving she was the source of the leaks.
“I’ve gone through life putting my foot down in certain situations. Not straight away, but if something’s just recurring, I will say, ‘I’m not putting up with this.’ I’ve rung journalists and said, ‘Why d’you keep putting this in the paper when you know it’s not true? I’m a person at the end of the day. I’m someone’s daughter, I’m someone’s sister, why are you writing this when it’s not who I am?’ You just reach a point where you think, I’m not taking this any more.” As was the case with the Instagram leaks? “Yes, but I really did not expect it to go as big as it went. And when it did, I just had to cope with it, because I wasn’t backing down, even though there was times when I thought it would be easier if I did.”
Wayne: “I told her not to. I know what Coleen’s morals are and I knew she was right in what she was saying, and I see first-hand the effect it had on her.” He looks at her. “It was getting stupid, wasn’t it, money-wise? The amount it was costing with lawyers. I said to her, ‘Don’t worry about that. Whether you win or lose in court, whatever the outcome is, you need to make sure you get your point across.’”
Perhaps the image that most changed public perception was the suited Wayne walking out of court carrying Coleen’s bag for her. Mrs Justice Steyn ruled in Coleen’s favour, concluding that her allegations about Vardy leaking the social media posts were “substantially true”. Vardy was ordered to pay 90% of Coleen’s £1.8m costs. The two sides eventually reached an agreement where Vardy agreed to pay £1.19m (90% of legal fees and expenses) and £212,266 in assessment costs (the figure for fighting over the costs).
The strange thing is, she says, people have suggested she should give the money away to charity, as if it was money she had “won” rather than costs recovered. “I got taken to court. It wasn’t my court case, it was her court case. I didn’t win anything. I lost! I just got my legal fees back! Some of them! So that’s where people didn’t understand the situation I was in.”
There are a number of unexpected moments in The Real Rooneys, not least when the couple take the two youngest boys to Poland. I ask if that was their idea or Disney’s.
Coleen: “No, that was us. Kit really wanted to go.”
Wayne: “It was part of his education. He was doing world war two at school.” They are seen in the show passing Auschwitz, and stopping to look at the cattle cars the Nazis used to transport people to their death.
Wayne: “It’s really important to learn about history, good and bad. Sometimes with your kids, you only want to tell them good stuff, and I don’t think that’s good for them.”
Coleen: “We knew we’d be passing Auschwitz, and we wanted to stop.” She looks at Wayne. “You’ve been before, haven’t you?”
Wayne: “I went at the Euros in 2012 in Poland and Ukraine. The FA asked us who wanted to go, and four or five of us went. It put a lot of things into perspective to see what had gone on there.”
Styling: Bemi Shaw. Hair: Darcy Harvey. Makeup: Cassie Lomas. On set tailor: Eleanor Williams. Studio: Big Sky Studios. Photograph: Stephanie Sian Smith/The Guardian
I ask how they keep their boys grounded when they live in such a privileged world. “It’s going back to the people you’ve got around you,” Coleen says. “That’s where I think our kids are lucky. They visit our family, who are still living in Croxteth. They’ll go out on their bikes around there, so they’re not living in this little bubble.”
Are their parents living in nicer houses than they used to? “Both our parents changed houses. But all our cousins and families are still in their same houses, and my friends are still all around there,” Wayne says.
Who are his best friends in football? He names some of his former Manchester United colleagues. “There’s Wes Brown, John O’Shea, Michael Carrick, Darren Fletcher, Darron Gibson. We’re all friends, and all the wives are friends as well. So we go on holidays together. There’s not actually many players you stay friends with.”
Coleen says she can’t stand the word “Wag”. “It put everyone into one category, and we’re all individuals doing different things. A Wag was made out to be someone who’s always out shopping and lunching, living the high life. Obviously, you do that sometimes.”
It’s almost time to leave. I tell them I’ve got a final nosy question. Did they get loads of money for making The Real Rooneys?
“I wouldn’t say loads,” Wayne says. “Of course, we’re getting paid to do it. We’re not going to do it for nothing.”
They insist the money (reported to be a £10m deal) isn’t the main reason they opened up their lives to the cameras. So why did they? Well, they say, there’s been so much rubbish talked about them over the years, and it’s nice to get the opportunity to show what they’re really like.
“I’m pretty sure people will come away and say, ‘You know what, despite everything that’s happened in their life and with football or with the Coleen stuff, they’ve still managed to be grounded and they still know where their roots are,’” Wayne says.
The thing is, they wanted it to be real, they say, and that reality does not always make for cosy viewing.
“We’ve been filming this for over a year,” Coleen says. “We’re in a really good place now, but there’s times in that programme when things weren’t going smooth. It’s difficult to navigate life sometimes, and there were some big decisions to be made.”
Wayne: “It would have been easier for us not to talk about that on camera.”
Coleen: “There was one time when they wanted us to come together for a talk and I was like, ‘I’m not talking to him, so why would I do that for the show when we genuinely aren’t talking?’”
In the end, she says they went ahead with the filming because it had been agreed.
Wayne grins. “She said something to me and I said, ‘This is the first thing she’s spoken to me in four days.’”
What was the argument about?
Wayne: “I can’t remember. I’m sure it was her fault.”
Coleen ignores his little joke. “No, but you’re more content now, aren’t you?” she says. “You’re in a better place in life, aren’t you? You went through a period where it was hard and you were a bit lost, weren’t you?”
In a way, Wayne says, that’s why they wanted to do the show. “This is what marriages are like all around the world, for everyone.”
“People see us as a married couple with four kids who go through tough periods like any married couple,” Coleen says. “You get stressed with kids or you get stressed with each other, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have fun with each other as well. Even though we’ve been in the spotlight for so many years, our morals and lives are still similar to the everyday person. I think people will watch this and see we’re actually really relatable.”
