Wayne Rooney is now a pundit who matters - and Virgil van Dijk’s anger proves it

Quite strong stuff as it goes, and especially if you take Rooney’s comments to be implying that Liverpool’s big two have taken their foot off the gas now that the ink has dried on their megabucks deals, which might be neither what he meant nor the fact of the matter, but is one plausible possible reading nonetheless. Van Dijk hit back: “I would say it is a bit of a lazy criticism,” he said, which was in itself, possibly, a callback to criticisms Rooney had made on Amazon last season when the Dutchman failed to track Ousmane Dembele for a PSG goal that ultimately saw Liverpool knocked out of the Champions League. “Liverpool are trying to press the ball and Van Dijk gets lazy,” Rooney had said. “If you keep your eye on van Dijk, he’s walking and leaves a massive gap to Dembele.” Handbags! If Rooney didn’t matter, Van Dijk wouldn’t have bitten.

Liverpool vs Man Utd, cultured defender vs force of nature striker, Polyglot Continental Fancy Dan vs Our Wayne, squeaky-clean statesman vs a flawed people’s champion. We might be witnessing the beginnings of a beautiful feud, and harmless fun it would be too. Partly it is a result of a classic media trick: play two public figures off against each other and get paid out twice. More often than not, a celebrity is not diligently combing through every article, clip and tweet to monitor what is being said about them, so the enterprising journo or broadcaster can “helpfully” make them aware of what’s what. This has two advantages: firstly because “Famous Person A hits back at Famous Person B” is almost guaranteed to get people interested, and also because it allows the reporter to provoke a spicy reaction from a position of safety. But it only works if the bigger boy you’re hiding behind actually means something, as Wayne clearly does to Virgil.

Anyway, Rooney the pundit is coming on nicely. He speaks a bit haltingly on Match of the Day sometimes but that is coachable and he’s smarter than detractors think. Maybe it’s snobbery about his accent, maybe being famous since he was a child means that he has made all his mistakes in the public eye and some people won’t stop judging him for that. To me, he seems remarkably normal, bruised and battered by the fame machine but still standing and still a decent guy.

The BBC is paying him a lot of money; whether or not it is good value is still up for debate but the above exchange suggests that Wayne could give the Beeb’s football offering something it has lacked for a while: a pundit with blue-chip playing credentials young enough to still be connected to the active stars and, ideally, get in their faces a bit. Where the likes of Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Roy Keane and Rio Ferdinand have been setting the punditry agenda with spiky and provocative takedowns, generating regular beef with current players and managers, the BBC’s main men have generally been too balanced, too affable or a few years too long retired to make waves.

The BBC accounts payable department might have been a little frustrated that Wayne chose Ferdinand’s YouTube series Rio Ferdinand Meets recently to make some highly newsworthy revelations about his relationship with drink (“there was a moment in my life where I was struggling massively with alcohol. I honestly believe if Coleen weren’t there I’d be dead”) rather than a BBC vehicle that could have benefited from the eyeballs. But it’s a work in progress and Rooney has the medals and the authority to suggest that he could be rattling some cages for a while to come.

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