Arsene Wenger's interview after Wayne Rooney's incredible Everton debut vs Arsenal | OneFootball

Highlights

It's been 21 years since Wayne Rooney's incredible Everton debut against Arsenal. Rooney, just 16 at the time, well and truly burst onto the scene with a sensational strike to give his boyhood club a 2-1 victory over Arsene Wenger's side. Arsenal were unbeaten in their previous 30 matches and were being held by David Moyes' Everton. With 10 minutes remaining, Tomasz Radzinski made way for Rooney.

Ten minutes were all that Rooney needed as he brought down Thomas Gravesen’s punt, spun away from Lauren and curled a beautiful effort off the underside of the crossbar and past David Seaman. “Remember the name, Wayne Rooney!” exclaimed commentator Clive Tyldesley as Rooney became the Premier League's youngest goalscorer.

We didn't have to 'remember the name' because it didn't take long for Rooney to become a superstar. Arsenal's unbeaten run was over but that wasn't the storyline that afternoon on Saturday, October 19 2002. It was all about Rooney.

So much so that the defeated manager, Wenger, was asked about the 16-year-old in his post-match interview. After just losing their first game in a long time, you'd think the Frenchman would just want to focus on his own side and not have too much to say about this new exciting talent. But it was quite the opposite, in fact.

Wenger couldn't hide his excitement at seeing Rooney for the first time and didn't hold back in his praise in a remarkable interview. Considering he had seen just 10 minutes of him in action...

"It's a special goal and a special talent. The biggest English talent I've seen since I've been in England, by far," said Wenger. "He has everything that you can dream to have. Intelligent, quick reactions, good at running with the ball, moving forward quickly and of course, he is very accurate in front of goal. "I hope he will not be injured now in the next two or three years and mentally he will be able to cope with what's happening with him. He is a huge talent."

When asked if Everton would be able to keep hold of the striker, Wenger added: "It is too early to say. I'm just giving a frank opinion of what I feel. I think he is too young to move now anyway. First, he has to prove at Everton how far he can go. He has time in front of him to see first, step by step. To keep his feet on earth, that is the most important thing you can wish."

Beautiful words from Wenger. After all, he knows a young talent when he sees one.

Rooney would go on to score 17 times in two seasons for Everton, before he earned a record-breaking move to Manchester United. The rest, as they say, is history. But Wenger knew, like many of us that were around to witness it, that Rooney was a superstar in the making.

David Moyes remembers hearing about Rooney for the first time

David Moyes was in charge of Everton at the time having taken over from Walter Smith in the previous season. And he remembers the little handover message from Smith, which included a mention of a young Rooney in the academy.

“Walter Smith told me a bit about the squad and then said, ‘by the way, there’s a boy in the academy who’s a really good player, his name is Wayne Rooney’,” Moyes recalled. “It’s one of those statements – everybody says they’ve got a good player in the academy. Will I ever see him? You never know. But that’s when he was first brought to my attention.

“Then there was the semi-final of the FA Youth Cup, he played and I watched him and thought, ‘wow’. I remember after that game I walked down, tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘look, you’ll be with me soon’. I don’t think Wayne at that time could really speak, he sort of mumbled something. But it was that season we took him out of school and put him on the bench at Southampton. It was a great story about Wayne, really. I was the one who benefitted as a manager from having an incredible talent like Wayne Rooney in the building, and not only that but ready to play when he was 16.

“There are a lot of good 16-year-olds, I’ve given a few of them debuts, but he was one who could cope physically, one who had ability and was growing into everything you recognise in his game. Sometimes as a manager you need good players and a bit of luck, and I certainly me having Wayne Rooney was good luck for me.”

Moyes on Rooney's debut

Moyes also remembers how he was pressured into given Rooney game time despite him being just 16 years old.

“I remember I was getting a bit of criticism at the time," he admitted. “The media were looking for Wayne Rooney to be in the team, and in a way the public were – everybody wants to see the new up-and-coming kid, and I was a bit like, ‘be careful, don’t do it too quick’. I was a young manager as well, I’d only just started at that level.

“We put him on at the time because he had such ability and he could make the difference. My memory is just of the goal, really, him pulling it down, turning and getting the shot away. I was thinking at the time, ‘what’s he going to do?’. We still didn’t know much about him yet. He had ability, power as a young boy to win his own fights, challenge the centre-halves, but his goal, I think it just sat up nicely for him.

“My biggest memory now is the commentary from the game: ‘Remember the name’. At that time in the dressing rooms at Goodison you could hear the supporters all the way down the corridor and we could hear them singing the whole way down. It was such a big moment for them – an Evertonian, one of them – it became a really big thing.

“At that time in my managerial career I wasn’t one for giving out big compliments – I probably said, ‘good goal’ to him at the end of it. But obviously I knew what it meant.”