Rooney leaves teenage years behind him

Sven-Goran Eriksson and Alex Ferguson will be hoping that Wayne Rooney's 20th birthday yesterday marks an end to the teenage temper that has accompanied his astonishing rise in the game.

The England and Manchester United managers share the same admiration for Wayne Rooney's talents, as Sven-Goran Eriksson prepares for next year's World Cup and Alex Ferguson seeks to avoid another trophyless season.

Yet both men are anxious for the Liverpudlian to do a better job of treading the fine line between competitive aggression and needless bookings.

Born into a family of boxers, the fire that makes Rooney such a fierce adversary is an important part of his game. Yet this season has provided examples of Rooney's temperament proving costly.

Rooney is United's best chance of repeating their 1999 Champions League triumph in what could be Ferguson's final season in charge. His dismissal after sarcastically applauding referee Kim Milton Nielsen for a booking against Villarreal last month earned him a two-match suspension.

On England duty, Rooney's yellow card against Northern Ireland cost him a potentially-damaging ban against Austria and his highly public on-field spat with captain David Beckham was just what Eriksson's men need to avoid in Germany.

Rooney burst on to the scene as a 16-year-old for Everton, scoring a superb goal to end Arsenal's 30-match unbeaten run in October 2002, and set two England records within a year as their youngest player, at 17, and youngest scorer.

Last year's 27 million-pound move to United, memorably celebrated with a Champions League hat-trick on his debut against Fenerbahce, has clearly enabled him to move up a level as a player.

Flourishing alongside the likes of Ryan Giggs and Ruud van Nistelrooy, Rooney finished his first season at Old Trafford as United's top scorer.

Ferguson now expects great things from Rooney, but Eriksson is hoping for football's biggest prize of all.

As a 12-year-old boy, Rooney watched Michael Owen score a superb goal for England against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup. When the second-round match ended, Rooney pretended to be England's teenage striker in a scratch game in the street with his friends.

Next year, Rooney will line up alongside Owen at the start of what many believe is England's best chance of winning the World Cup since 1990, if not 1966.

The responsibility is unlikely to faze him, as the striker has so far taken everything in his stride, showing a lack of nerves that belies his years. All Eriksson hopes now is that Rooney lives up to his own expectations on the behaviour front.

"In the past, my temperament has let me down a couple of times," Rooney said his month. "But I'm a young lad and I want to learn from that."

In a comment that could also be a 20th birthday wish from Eriksson and Ferguson, Rooney added: "I don't think there'll be many problems in the future."