The Football Association has sought observations from Wayne Rooney after he revealed he wanted to try and injure an opposition player during Manchester United’s match against Chelsea in April 2006.
In an interview published in the Mail on Sunday, Rooney says he changed his studs to “long mental ones” ahead of the match at Stamford Bridge with the intention to “hurt someone”.
Rooney recalled:
“For that game I changed them to big, long metal ones – the maximum length you could have because I wanted to try and hurt someone, try and injure someone.
“I knew they were going to win that game. You could feel they were a better team at the time so I changed my studs.
“The studs were legal but thinking if there’s a challenge there I knew I’d want to go in for it properly, basically. I did actually.
“John Terry left the stadium on crutches. I left a hole in his foot and then I signed my shirt to him after the game.
“A few weeks later I sent it to him and asked for my stud back.
“If you look back when they were celebrating, JT’s got his crutches from that tackle.”
The FA fined Roy Keane £150,000 and gave him a five-match ban in 2002 after he admitted in his autobiography to intentionally hurting then-Manchester City midfielder Alf-Inge Haaland.
More to follow…
