01/05/2023–07/05/2023
THE 33 YEAR WAIT IS FINALLY OVER….
Wow, what a season it has been for Napoli! They have finally clinched the Serie A title for the first time since 1990, and it’s all thanks to a Victor Osimhen goal that saw them draw against Udinese. With a 16-point lead at the top of the table, Napoli have proven themselves to be the best team in Italy.
And who better to lift the scudetto than Victor Osimhen, the man who has been a revalation this season with an incredible 22 goals and 4 assists !! The sight of him surrounded by ecstatic Napoli fans after the final whistle is one of the best footballing pictures you’ll ever see. Who knows, maybe one day he might be surrounded by Manchester United Fans (manifesting)……
But it’s not just Osimhen who deserves credit — the whole Napoli team has been a joy to watch this season. Their 15-game unbeaten run early on in the season marked them out as serious title contenders, and they’ve lived up to that hype with their lethal attack and rock-solid defense.
A lot of that success should be down to their manager, Spalletti. He managed to build an amazing squad despite a major overhaul in the summer seeing the departures of long-serving players such as Insigne, Fabian Ruiz, Dries Mertens and Koulibaly. Many would have thought that this would completely derail their season. However, the complete opposite unfolded..new stars were born such as Khvicha Kvaratskhelia who stepped up to the plate. And let’s not forget about the likes of Kim Min Jae, Frank Anguissa, and Stanisslav Lobotka, who have all played crucial roles in Napoli’s success.
- All in all, it’s been an amazing season for Napoli, and there’s no doubt that they’ll be looking to build on this success next season. Who knows — they might even become back to back Scudetto champions.
Players who have moved me most
In light of Harry Kane passing Wayne Rooney in the Premier Leagues’ all-time top goal scorers list, I thought it fitting to take a moment to reminisce about a player that was arguably the best of his generation to start off a countdown list of footballers that I think were rather important in their time.
Wayne Rooney
“I called my mate the other day, he said he saw the white Pele, so I asked, “who is he?” He goes by the name of Wayne Rooney”.
Picking a player who is arguably the best player his country has ever produced feels like cheating. Wayne Rooney is a player who was obviously good, I don’t think you needed to be some savant to recognise why he’s so highly revered or understand how he achieved what he did.
His first goal in professional football was against Arsenal at 16. I didn’t watch it live but when I watched it years later when he was already at United, I was so moved I didn’t get annoyed the way I usually do when I see any goals against my club, I was kind of excited? The idea that at 16 years old he was that good blew my mind. I was 8 when I first saw that goal and understood it contextually and I still don’t understand it, you watch it back now and try ignoring who he is now, vs who he was when he scored that goal and it feels surreal.
It looked so natural to him, you’d almost expect him to go on to become the player he became off of that moment alone, the idea of pressure or the weight of expectation clearly didn’t faze him at that point. To this day I’m yet to see anything like it, there are players who make their debuts even younger than Rooney was when he scored that goal, there are players who score incredible goals or have unbelievable moments in their first seasons of professional football, but none of them have done it in a way even close to the significance of Wayne Rooney’s first premier league goal at 16 years old, truly I don’t think there will ever be another player that truly is a superstar from the moment they score that first goal.
United in particular have seen many pretenders have incredible moments (shoutout Federico Macheda) but he like many others who will come after him will be remembered almost exclusively for moments more so than the full body of work in their careers, and I say this not to mock players like Macheda but to truly bring into context how big a career Wayne Rooney had given the scale of all that he had to overcome at once
His debut for Manchester United… He scores a hatrick? A player scoring on their debut is a great moment and regardless of how often you see it, it’s always a enjoyable moment, Manchester United fans will never fail to remind you how great Antony Martial’s first goal for them against Liverpool was (we can argue about it being slightly fortunate another day). That being said, a goal on debut is rarely as indicative as Rooney’s debut for Manchester United against Fenerbache.
His first goal not one that was particularly spectacular, but still well taken after a defensive lapse from Fenerbache. The second a well struck shot from outside the box, only 30 minutes into his debut. The third, a freekick hit into the top left corner of the net. “Its inevitable, somethings are just meant to be” crones Clive Tyldeseley. “Tomorrow’s back page is written, Wayne Rooney scores his first professional hattrick”. His first of 7.
For Rooney to end up becoming the second all time premier league leading goal scorer is all the more impressive when you’d watch him play there were times where the fact that he’d scored wasn’t what truly captured your attention. His involvement on the pitch for a forward went so much further beyond how many goals he scored, to call him just a striker does him a disservice, it underrepresents how much of the game he was involved in at all times.
Rooney was so good for Manchester United that if you were born at a certain point, you could be convinced that he came from their academy, he made his Manchester United debut at 18/19 and scored a hattrick in his first game. He was bound to become the figure he became, the fact that by the time of his departure he goes back to Everton and you’d think that was the end of his story, and yet his story doesn’t end there.
Rooney after a year at Everton makes the switch to the United States, to D.C United, where in his stint he produces a moment that I think best defines who he was as a footballer. In the dying embers of a game, in the final seconds of the game, after a corner is cleared, Rooney chases back and makes a slide tackle near the halfway line after DC United’s goalkeeper had gone up for the corner, essentially a goal saving tackle, a match defining challenge, and plays an inch perfect pass to set up a last-minute winner. It’s topknot his goal but it doesn’t happen without him, for all the goals it’s the moments like this that I will remember most as time goes on. Wayne Rooney is an icon that I’ll never forget, a Manchester United, England and footballing legend. We will never forget.
