It was in the early hours of a morning in 2010, at a hotel bar in central London, that I saw for myself just what easy prey multi-millionaire footballer Wayne Rooney could have been for women drawn to his fame and money.
As we enjoyed a drink together following an awards ceremony, Manchester United’s then star striker was suddenly encircled by two heavily made-up Russian women who promptly sat in the seats next to him. I had no doubt they knew who he was – and that he was worse for wear.
Just a few hours earlier Wayne had been presented with the prestigious Football Writers’ Player of the Year award in front of hundreds in the Lancaster Gate Hotel ballroom. He had been drinking heavily. And if it had not been for his loyal rottweiler of an agent, Paul Stretford, sitting next to him, I fear he could have found himself in some bother with the ladies.
I don’t know if Coleen, Wayne’s beloved partner of 23 years, was ever made aware of this grotesque duo and their intentions. She had stayed in Majorca on a family holiday while he flew back to pick up the gong. But if it was brought to her attention, she would have been furious – and not with her husband.
Because for two decades, the couple have been quietly dealing with the footballer’s battle with alcohol, which can finally explain why Coleen has stood by her man despite his many high-profile misdemeanours.
For some time now, those who know the Rooneys have told me that Coleen has staunchly supported Wayne and refused to dump him, despite his involvement in a number of sordid sex scandals which would have torn many couples apart.
Then on Wednesday, Wayne, 39, revealed that he has struggled with alcohol so much during the past two decades that he could have died if Coleen, also 39, hadn’t been there to help him manage his problems.
The former Manchester United and England captain explained how he was ‘struggling massively’ with his drinking during his playing career.
Wayne Rooney and Coleen watch the New York Knicks play against the Boston Celtics in 2006
The pair with their four children Kai, Klay, Kit and Cass
‘I honestly believe if she weren’t there, I’d be dead,’ he told his close friend and former team-mate Rio Ferdinand in an interview on Ferdinand’s podcast.
‘Coleen is the best: I’ve made mistakes in the past which are well documented but I’m a little bit different at times. And she keeps me on that path and she’s done it for 20-odd years.
‘I wanted to go out and enjoy my time with my friends and have a night out. It got to a point where I went too far – that was a moment in my life where I was struggling massively with alcohol.
‘I didn’t think I could turn to anyone. I didn’t really want to because I didn’t want to put that burden on anyone.
‘I just drank for two days straight. Come training and at the weekend, I’d score two goals and then I’d go back and go and drink for two days straight again.
‘She’s helped me control that massively. She’s managed me because I needed managing.’
Wayne and Coleen are one of Britain’s best-known and best-loved celebrity couples, and are about to star in their own fly-on-the-wall documentary on Disney+ which will follow their lives at their £10million Cheshire mansion.
They both grew up in the tough Croxteth area of Liverpool and met at school when they were teenagers. After several years of dating, they married in 2008 in a stunning wedding in Portofino, Italy and quickly went on to have their first son Kai, 15 – followed by three more, Klay, 12, Kit, nine, and Cass, seven.
Coleen and Wayne Rooney at the Nordoff Robbins’ Legends of Football at JW Marriott Grosvenor House in London last year
Indeed, much of their lives has been played out in public. There was, of course, the incident when the footballer was caught having sex with escorts Helen Wood and Jenny Thompson at Manchester’s Lowry hotel in 2010.
And who could forget when he had sex with prostitutes after he was caught on CCTV visiting a backstreet brothel in Liverpool when he was just 18?
Yet neither Wayne nor Coleen have ever discussed his troubles with booze. And it is Wayne’s alcohol problem, say friends of the Rooneys, that explains why Coleen has always stood by him despite the star finding himself engulfed in several scandals, including the time Wayne was charged with drink-driving in 2017 after taking estate agent Laura Simpson’s VW Beetle back to her house.
At the time Coleen moved back to her parents’ house but later it was revealed she had decided not to end their marriage. Sources tell me that at the time there was no doubt in Coleen’s mind that he wasn’t going to have sex with Laura but was going for a drink.
One source close to Coleen tells me: ‘So many people have wondered over the years why Coleen has forgiven Wayne again and again – but they have had no idea what has been going on behind closed doors. While Wayne’s scandals usually involve women, Coleen knows that it is alcohol that leads to so much of it, and she takes the view that often those out looking to target a rich man take advantage of him being drunk.
‘It makes her very angry that women do that to her husband. Coleen is extremely protective of Wayne: she knows him like nobody else. Now the world knows why her loyalty is as strong as it is – she knows of his demons and she has supported him through them.
‘They have four children and she doesn’t want them not to have a father around.’
One particular occasion back in 2021, which I’m told infuriated Coleen, was when pictures were leaked of her husband passed out in a chair as two women cavorted in their underwear in a hotel room in Manchester.
One flashed her bottom next to Wayne and then posted it online, captioning it ‘Mooney Rooney’.
Coleen ‘hit the roof’ and Wayne called the police, angry that the women had taken pictures of him while he was asleep without his permission and feared he had been the victim of a ‘set-up’.
‘Coleen took the view that these women were awful,’ says one friend. ‘He had passed out so she wasn’t worried that he was going to have sex with them, what made her cross was that they were ridiculing him for attention. They had taken massive advantage of him because he was drunk.’
Most recently a video circulated online which showed a man and woman looking around Wayne’s rented apartment in Plymouth where he was managing the city’s football team. He insisted that the couple had given him a lift home after drinking in a local bar but rather than Coleen being cross about the incident, she was enraged that a narrative circulated that said he had gone back with a ‘mystery woman’.
One pal of the Rooneys hopes this new revelation will help him, saying: ‘Now the truth is out there, perhaps the women who have tried to take advantage of Wayne while he was drunk might stop now.’
