Which Premier League wonderkids would make it into a dream five-a-side team? 3 Added Minutes' Fantasy Five-A-Side works it all out as Wayne Rooney takes on Francis Jeffers and Jack Wilshere, Cesc Fabregas and James Milner all battle for places.
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00:00 Right, finally we need one more player for our five-man squad and I'm going to nominate
00:11 the ultimate Premier League one, which is Waverly. We all remember the name and we remember
00:16 the name from the moment he sent that incredible goal arcing over David Seaman, you know, when
00:21 he was just 16 years old and none of us has ever forgotten it. It's not often that the
00:27 level of hype you get as a 16 year old or as a 17 year old translates into a non-stop
00:33 world-class career. There was just no point to which he really dipped. It wasn't you.
00:36 You get a lot of kids who sort of sparkle for a little bit like someone like James Milner
00:40 who sparkled and then, you know, sort of fell back into the background for a few years before
00:44 sort of, you know, coming back and turning into the player we all know and love today.
00:49 Wayne Rooney was just extraordinary from the get-go. He was extraordinary as a teenager,
00:53 extraordinary through his twenties, right up the way to really to sort of, you know,
00:56 the end of his career. Yeah, I mean, he did score one of that goal against sort of Arsenal
01:01 over David Seaman. That was the, he was the youngest goal scorer in the time for a little
01:05 while before Milner took it over. Just a little while later at 17, he became the youngest
01:11 ever England player when he played that friendly against Australia. Scored just half of those
01:16 goals for Everton, then United. Let's not forget, he was still pretty young when he
01:20 moved to United and for England as well. And just so quickly became one of the best strikers
01:26 in the Premier League, one of the best strikers for England in the national team while he
01:30 was still a teenager. Just, I can't remember ever really watching a player in the Premier
01:34 League who had that amount of talent and was just so in command of it and so in control
01:39 of it as, you know, at such a young age. Also, of course, a social media superstar, purveyor
01:46 of some of the finest moments in Twitter history. His, you know, his in memoriam for Whitney
01:51 Houston will go down as one of football's greatest moments, you know, right up there
01:55 with his goal against David Seaman. And the only thing I can say to anyone who wants to
02:00 argue for anyone other than Rooney in this team is shut it you egg.
02:05 I think you sort of touched on it there. The best thing about Rooney at that age was that
02:10 he had this wonderful arrogance. He belonged and he knew he belonged from the moment he
02:15 stepped onto that field, from the moment he scored that goal past Seaman. Wayne Rooney,
02:20 players grow into Premier League footballers. Wayne Rooney was a Premier League footballer
02:26 from the get-go. It was as simple as that. He was special, undeniable, inevitable, and
02:31 I agree, he has to go on the team. That being said, I want to give a little nod to the thinking
02:37 man's Wayne Rooney. A man who was arguably Wayne Rooney before Wayne Rooney. And who
02:43 actually made his England debut on the same night as Wayne Rooney, which is a Francis
02:47 Jeffers. Now, obviously again, started at Everton in the late nineties, unbelievably
02:52 high. He was going to be the next one. He was going to be the England centre forward
02:56 for years to come. Francis Jeffers made his debut as a 16 year old, all this sort of stuff.
03:01 Went to Arsenal, went to Arsenal as well, by the way, for an initial 8 million pounds,
03:05 which was, you know, that's quite a thing, quite a thing in the late nineties, sort of
03:09 turn of the millennium. So, you know, he was really, really hyped. Obviously never really
03:16 worked out and he had a sort of slow and sort of quite unceremonial decline through the
03:23 divisions. I think he ended his career, it might mean Akron and Stanley or something,
03:26 that's no disrespect to Akron and Stanley, but it's certainly not Champions League football
03:30 with Arsene Wenger, is it? You know? So, yeah, so I think on the basis of how hyped he was,
03:38 and then sort of what became of him, you can't deny that he was a wonder kid and it obviously
03:43 didn't work out for him. That being said, like you say, it has to be Wayne Rooney, because
03:48 if it wasn't Wayne Rooney, then neither of us would deserve to work in football journalism
03:52 ever again. So it has to be Wayne Rooney.
03:55 Yeah. I think it's worth saying again, you know, Jeffers, he's kind of become a little
04:01 bit of a meme, thanks to his sort of decline, but he was really good as a kid. He was a
04:08 fantastic player. All that hype was, it wasn't completely baseless, but you know, I mean,
04:13 the hype for Rooney was even higher, what Rooney became was even better, obviously.
04:19 And just, yeah, Rooney is one of those players that deserves to be in basically any FIVERR
04:22 side team we talk about that he could possibly qualify for. So yeah, Wayne Rooney's the man.
04:27 [Whistle]
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