If Wayne Rooney takes the DC United job it will be a massive shame because, from a career perspective, he’d have been better off staying with Derby.
He’d done all of the hard work — in crazy circumstances — at Pride Park.
And as the club rebuilds itself there was a chance for him to learn even more about his trade in the hurly burly of English football, not least in a transfer window in which there was always going to be a large number of incoming and outgoing transfers for him to be a part of.
If not Derby, then I’d have loved to have seen him at a Sheffield Wednesday, Sheffield United or Sunderland instead.
I mean no disrespect to the managers at those clubs when I say that, just that a job at that kind of level would have been much more suited to a man who has made no secret of the fact he’d like to manage Manchester United one day.
If that is still what he’s chasing then a move to DC won’t even make a scratch on his CV. In fact, if he has two years in Washington he’ll be no closer to getting the United or Everton jobs than he is right now.
If it goes wrong for him, which is a possibility, then it will be a big black mark against him because, let’s face it, even by MLS standards, DC is a bit of a backwater.
I’d get it more if he was mulling over an offer from LA Galaxy, LA FC or New York City.
Or if he was going to a club which had a big name or two in their ranks such as Bale at LA or, before that, Zlatan Ibrahimovic at Galaxy, or Rooney himself at DC.
But there will be nothing at DC, no learning, that really takes him on, certainly not in the way that being at a top-10 Championship club would have done.
I know some people will say going to New York did Patrick Vieira no harm but he’d been through the City system and he had to go to Nice before getting a chance back in England.
And there’s no obvious path from DC to Brighton, Crystal Palace, or even a Burnley for Rooney, and certainly not to a United or Everton.
It looks to me like he’s just entering a holding pattern in a city in which he enjoyed living, which is strange for someone who has been so ruthless in his career.
Others will point out that Leicester took Brendan Rodgers from a lesser league because he’d taken Celtic to the brink of the treble Treble but I don’t buy that.
It was more for the fact he’d previously taken Liverpool so close to the Premier League title and had a history of working with young players.
But will a Premier League club take Rooney based on what he has done at Derby and DC?
No. The only reason someone would take him would be because he’s Wayne Rooney, yet doing well with a sleeping giant here would have opened even more doors.
Burnley is a good example — and Rooney will have fancied it — because if Vincent Kompany does well there then people will take notice.
After Rooney’s first game at DC, however, interest will fade and he will be out of sight, out of mind.
Making any decision to go there, if that is what he does, even stranger.
