In Sir Alex Ferguson, Rooney had a priceless education. “His man-management is the best I’ve ever seen. I always remember as a kid, every half-time arguing with him. Constantly. I remember thinking: ‘Why’s he keep having a go at me? There’s players far worse than what I’ve been.’ But the older you get, you realise why he’s doing it. He would have a go at me for dribbling, which I very rarely … well, I dribbled a bit more then,” he says, smiling. “But for [players such as] Nani, it would just maybe trigger something in their head, make them think: ‘Maybe I shouldn’t dribble as much.’ If he [Sir Alex] spoke to Nani the way he spoke to me, he’d break down in tears. He [Nani] wouldn’t be able to come back out.”
In my specific reading review about Ferguson's man-management, I didn't make a reference to the skill highlighted by Rooney. I suppose this isn't a huge surprise - the book, Managing My Life, is told from Ferguson's perspective, and sometimes we are blind to our own capabilities, whether they be strengths or weaknesses. (A less likely but still plausible possibility is that Ferguson incorporated this skill into his toolkit after the book was published, which hit bookshelves at the halfway point of his career; Rooney joined United a few seasons later.)
The thing that struck me about the above, however, had little to do with Ferguson - what about Rooney? There are many reasons why Rooney had a superlative career to Nani; the capacity for accepting direct feedback was surely among his most important qualities. It's very easy to think about this using a simple example. Suppose both players were making the same error and Ferguson needed to correct it. He'll tell Rooney - fix it. And what will he tell Nani? He'll have to wait until Nani is in earshot of Rooney, and then he'll tell Rooney again - why haven't you fixed it? So I ask you, reader - why would Nani improve faster than Rooney?
This isn't meant to suggest Nani never accepted direct feedback - I can only infer, using Rooney's comments. But despite having similar starts as talented youngsters, Nani's career didn't quite reach the same heights as Rooney's; many managers at the time may have preferred a young Nani to a young Rooney, but no one would say so today, with the benefit of hindsight. It's impossible for someone like me to know, for sure, what happened during their careers. But I suspect that most of us, when we think about the way we receive and respond to feedback, have a lot more in common with Nani than with Rooney; we should expect similar results.
