Soocer: Putting the Man back in United

Wayne Rooney was elevated into the ranks of the Premier League's super-rich with his new contract at Manchester United understood to be worth around £200,000-a-week, including bonuses, in a remarkable end to his stand-off with Sir Alex Ferguson.

Both sides projected a united front yesterday after negotiations brought Rooney back from the brink to sign a contract that puts him on a par with Chelsea's top earners such as John Terry and Frank Lampard, who earn basic wages of around £170,000 a week plus extras; if not Yaya Toure at Manchester City, whose wages rise to £221,000 a week in April.

Ferguson said that he had secured a personal apology from Rooney yesterday morning for the player's public insubordination when he criticised the club in a statement for failing to attract top players.

"He apologised to me this morning and the players and I think he will do that with the fans, which is important," Ferguson said.

But Rooney stopped well short of issuing a public apology in a subsequent interview with the club's in-house television station MUTV.

Having first said in a joint statement issued with the club yesterday that he had to "win them [the fans] over" again with his performances, Rooney failed to say the word "sorry" for a second time in his broadcast interview.

"I am sure the fans have been upset over the last few days with everything they have heard in the media," Rooney said. "I care for this club, I want to be here, that's important to know and I want to continue being successful at this club. Some fans mightn't take to it too quickly. They might take time but I am going to be giving the same as I always do ... 100 per cent on the pitch."

After a week of internal strife unprecedented at United for its public nature, the club were eager to play down the notion that either side had come out top in negotiations. But behind the scenes there was astonishment at the coup Rooney and his agent, Paul Stretford, have been able to pull off, having virtually burnt their bridges with that incendiary public statement.

Even Rooney admitted that he believed his relationship with United was over after Ferguson spoke openly about his despair at the player's refusal to sign a contract on Tuesday. "Once it all came out it looked as if there was nowhere to go, that was it," Rooney said.

However, it would appear that Ferguson's decision not to abandon hope proved decisive. Rooney said: "The manager made it clear the door was still open for me to sign and that is when I spoke to my agent and I said, 'Let's go in and sit down with them and try and resolve it and get the deal done.' We went in and spoke to the manager, the Glazers and David Gill [chief executive] and I am really pleased that we managed to sort it out."

What precisely changed Rooney's mind might never be revealed. Certainly, he got more than he would have been first offered had he opened talks in August but not as much as if he had held out on his original threat and been sold to City in January. The mob of United supporters that milled around outside his home on Thursday night cannot claim the credit either - Rooney had already agreed to sign the deal by then.

As diplomatically as he could, Ferguson effectively claimed a loss of nerve on Rooney's part when faced with the prospect of leaving United.

"He has realised the enormity of Manchester United. Sometimes when you are in a club you can look outside. You seem to think that something is better elsewhere. Once all that publicity came out about the impact and the response about [sic] how big Manchester United is that resonated with Wayne quite a lot.

"He has had second thoughts and he wants to stay ... I always feel there is a quality in a person when he says he is sorry and realises he has made a mistake. That happens. Particularly with young people and I admire that."

While the United manager can claim a victory of sorts in Rooney's apology to him and the players, there is no doubt that the player pushed his manager and the club further than anyone has done in the past. Despite public insubordination that would not be tolerated in any other individual, Rooney has been given a reprieve that proves Ferguson's rules are not quite as uncompromising as thought.

It is understood that Rooney was spoken to by Ferguson and senior players about what they regarded as the perils of being badly advised by Stretford, his extremely hard-nosed agent. The relationship between Stretford, a lifetime United fan, and his client, however, shows no signs of weakening and both stand to become even wealthier out of this deal.

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In fact Stretford, the vacuum cleaner salesman turned agent could make an estimated £3 million solely for his role in getting Rooney - who, until a few months ago, saw himself as a lifelong Red - to agree an extended deal.

Nice work if you can get it: that is the most obvious, glib conclusion of the role of a man who was central to the extraordinary dramas which unfolded over the past five days. It was Stretford, who informed United's chief executive David Gill in August that Rooney "wanted away", and Stretford who reiterated it this week, and who drafted and released the bombshell statement - just two hours before a big Champions League game - that implied Rooney had been denied "assurances about the continued ability of the club to attract the top players in the world".

Sir Alex Ferguson - unless he is an Oscar-standard actor - was genuinely shocked as these events unravelled, and United were forced even to bring co-owner Joel Glazer to the phone to beseech Rooney to stay. Amid this smokescreen of fretting, Stretford was key as Rooney, after all, signed on the dotted line until 2015.

When Stretford was the guiding hand who led Rooney from Everton to United in 2004, it was reported that he was guaranteed £1m in commission, which rose to £1.5m as the striker stayed five years.

Given Rooney's reported £90,000-per-week deal until yesterday, and a new five-year deal quite possibly worth twice that, or £46.8m over its full term, or £9.36m per year, Stretford's take will be in the region of £3m, or somewhere just over six per cent. This is by no means extravagant within the business.

Stretford has argued, that he is much more than a middle man on the take. In an interview with The Independent 10 years ago, he talked with some conviction about the ability to make a difference to a player's life, and not just their (and his) bank balance. Kevin Campbell's move from Trabzonspor to Everton was his most satisfying up until that date, he said.

"We took a man out of an awful set of circumstances," he explained at the time. "Kevin's pregnant wife was back home. He had been racially abused and wasn't getting paid his wages. I mobilised lawyers, politicians and the British Consul. To sit between Kevin and the Everton secretary, Michael Dunford, on a flight home was a great feeling."

In the same interview he also spoke fondly of then-client Andy Cole as "someone I will always be close to". And yet Cole wrote in his column in The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi yesterday how Stretford had "made me part of the family", but only while he, Cole, was making Stretford money.

Stretford's controversial relationship with Rooney started in 2002, when the 17-year-old became a client. Stretford was accused of poaching Rooney - a charge that ended up in court, where Stretford accused others of blackmail.

That case collapsed. Stretford won another case after taking Rooney away from the Proactive firm he had started but was charged by the FA with misconduct and banned for 18 months, a sentence that was then halved on appeal.

He returned to active "agenting" for Rooney earlier this year, just in time to sort out his next contract.

- INDEPENDENT