Kevin Mitchell in the Observer takes a look at the troubles that face Wayne Rooney.
It is Wayne Rooney's misfortune to be young, famous and indiscrete in the age of the chav. If ever a footballer were destined to be portrayed as a representative of all that is uncouth in modern Britain it is the snarling genius from Croxteth.
A week before the start of another season, he stands on the brink of greatness. He might win the Premiership for Manchester United or even the Champions League and, next year, the World Cup for England - yet Rooney is slaughtered in print on a regular basis.
Some of it is his own fault. Mixing with prostitutes and gangsters is not the way to win over a relentlessly moralistic media. And the critics are armed with a raft of preconceptions. Wayne's got a chav name and a chav girlfriend, they snigger. He comes gift-wrapped for lazy commentators who are either unaware or dismissive of his fund-raising for charities. And who look on his devotion to his childhood sweetheart, Coleen McLoughlin, not as a story to celebrate, but as an opportunity to laugh at their supposed naffness.
As for his football, Rooney does himself few favours, certainly. He has adopted the unfortunate traits of his trade, from ranting at referees to hacking down opponents - not to mention earning an obscene amount of money. He embarrassed himself last November in a friendly in Madrid when he was taken off after inexplicably running out of control against Spain - and this months after the 2004 European championship, a tournament he threatened to dominate until it all came to a sad end with injury against Portugal.
And he's a Scouser. For some public moralisers who are ignorant in every sense of the word, that is a crime in itself, a stain on his character no amount of brilliant goals can remove. Long before the tragedies of Heysel and Hillsborough, the citizens of Liverpool have endured the most vile slander about their integrity.
That Rooney moved from Everton to United hasn't helped. More than most footballers, he inspires the sort of tribal spite reserved for the best teams and the best players. And, as he shakes off whatever summer flab he might have accumulated in the ludicrously short break between the seasons, he is in cracking form. Opponents and rival supporters will have good reason to hate the sight of him this winter.
Over the years, we will no doubt come to know Rooney better than he has been painted in his short time as a celebrity. It is up to him if that image is a positive one. And, because he has the bearing of a grown man, it is easy to forget he is only 19. He has always been ahead of his time.
Rooney is 5ft 8in and has the stocky build and low, well-balanced carriage that made Maradona and Paul Gascoigne such irresistible attacking forces. (The doom merchants reckon he also shares their propensity to self-destruct.) And he makes the most of this genetic gift, insinuating himself between defenders dazzled by his quick change of pace and direction.
Asked for three words to describe himself, he says with only a hint of self-parody: 'Funny, romantic and hard!' Coleen might sign up for the first two; opponents would agree with the third. Martin Baker, who spent a week with Rooney while researching a piece on David Moyes for The Observer Sport Monthly , says the player was as shy as most teenagers surrounded by adults - until he got on the pitch. 'He is animated and smiling when a football is there to be kicked,' Baker says.
Last season, despite United hitting a flat spot, Rooney's progress was one of their few highlights - he scored the goal of the season (a stunning volley against Middlesbrough); the widely acknowledged second-best goal of the season (a similarly spectacular strike against Newcastle); he was their top scorer with 17 goals and he was voted Man of the Match in the FA Cup Final.
His bigger challenge is to stay out of trouble. The moralists were back in top gear when Rooney was caught on closed-circuit TV making 10 visits to a back-street brothel last August. A month later, Manchester police uncovered a plot to petrol-bomb Rooney's car and they placed him under protective surveillance.
Maybe they will have seen what the critics don't. Maybe they will have seen him visiting Rosie, Coleen's adopted disabled sister. Or out raising money for Claire House and Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool.
'It is kids like Rosie who are heroes,' Rooney says, 'not people on the England pitch. Sometimes, when I look at Rosie, I feel very sad. You get this feeling in your throat... she's such a great kid, like a baby who will never grow up.'
He's got some growing up of his own to do. In the unlikely event of our getting off his back for awhile, he might just manage it.