Barcelona icon and current manager Xavi Hernandes will never forget Wayne Rooney’s incredible comment to him at Wembley during the 2011 Champions League final.
Manchester United and Barcelona squared off in the Europa League knockout round play-offs earlier this season but it wasn’t altogether that long ago that these two European giants were battling it out in Champions League finals as the gladiators from both sides went all out against each other in 2009 and 2011.
Supercoach extraordinaire Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona side prevailed in both finals, securing a 2-0 win in Rome in 2009 before beating their same opponents 3-1 at Wembley two years later, with a grim-faced Sir Alex Ferguson admitting after the 2011 final that his vanquished Man Utd side had never faced a better team during his long spell as manager.
Despite Wayne Rooney having gotten United back on level terms with a great finish in the 34th minute, cancelling out Pedro’s opener, goals from the unplayable Lionel Messi and David Villa in the second half sealed victory for the Catalan club.
Barcelona simply ran rings around Man Utd as they mesmerized their opponents into submission, just like they had done to many of their opponents during Guardiola’s four years in charge. And apparently it had all gotten to a point where it was too much for Rooney, who actually told Xavi to make it stop with 10 minutes left on the clock.
In Andres Iniesta’s 2016 book, ‘The Artist: Being Iniesta’, Xavi revealed his in-game chat with United’s star forward.
“Rooney came up to me before the end of the game,” Xavi, who now manages Barça, said.
“It must have been around the eighty-minute mark, something like that.
“And he said to me: ‘That’s enough. You’ve won. You can stop playing the ball around now.’”
Rooney had always been hailed as a warrior on the pitch but even his spirit was totally demoralized after chasing shadows for most of the second half.
Speaking in 2020, Rooney admitted that he wanted to join Barcelona in 2010 after rocking Man Utd by handing in a shock transfer request.
“In my head, at the time, in that two-day period, I was ready to go and play in Spain,” Rooney told the United podcast, per the Daily Mail. “Ideally, I would have liked to have gone to Barcelona, but it was looking more likely to be Real Madrid than Barcelona. Chelsea were always there as well.
“I remember sitting down for one day and thinking “imagine playing in that Barcelona team – Messi, Xavi, Iniesta and [Sergio] Busquets’. And at that time Messi wasn’t playing the way he plays now, as a No 9 for instance. He was out wide.
“I was thinking I could have slotted in perfectly. I could have come to the ball as well and have players running in behind. I remember thinking about that.”
It would certainly have been football on the clouds just imagining Rooney, Messi, Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets playing together in 2010… what a remarkable team that would have been.