Wayne Rooney has revealed he kept the match ball from Man Utd's Champions League final defeat in 2011, despite the game not going his team's way.
The former England international was on target at Wembley as United sought revenge for their 2009 loss to Barcelona. It wasn't enough, though, with goals from Pedro, Lionel Messi and David Villa giving victory to Pep Guardiola's team.
Rooney scored 253 goals for United during more than a decade at the club, more than any other player. That run included multiple hat-tricks, including one on his debut against Fenerbahce, but he was determined to walk away with the ball after a game in which he failed to notch a treble.
"At the end, I grabbed the ball and sought out Lionel Messi, David Villa and Pedro — Barcelona’s scorers," Rooney wrote in The Times. "I got them to sign it and, as the scorer of United’s goal, put my own signature on it too. I still have the ball in my house.
"Why would I do something like that? We’d lost a final and I was gutted but I also had this sense of having been part of something special.
"It was a feeling that I had just shared a pitch with some of the greatest players who ever played. Barcelona were incredible and Messi was the catalyst for all of it."
Is Lionel Messi the greatest ever? Have your say in the comments section
Rooney's praise for Messi came before the Argentina star helped his country win the World Cup final in Qatar. The 35-year-old scored twice in the final at Lusail Stadium, also converting his penalty in the match-deciding shoot-out, to deny France and Kylian Mbappe a second straight title.
Messi had acknowledged before the tournament that it would "surely" be his final World Cup. He had never scored a knockout goal in the competition before Qatar 2022, but this time around he found the target in every single game from the round of 16 onwards.
The achievement follows a 2021 Copa America triumph with Argentina, to go along with the several Champions League titles he won as a Barcelona player. Rooney was on the losing side for two of those games, while Messi was on the right side of another 3-1 scoreline in 2015 as Barcelona - with Luis Enrique in the dugout - got the better of Juventus.
"If there is one club I would love to have played for it was Barcelona, when they had that side," Rooney added in his Times column. "It was a funny feeling because there I was, in the team of the year with them, but I felt almost in awe of them.
