Wayne Rooney made strict Nike demand over his boots at Man Utd that no other player in the world had

The fascinating world of football boot deals is loaded with peculiar details most of us on the outside could barely even imagine.

Wayne Rooney was one of the jewels in the Nike crown during his Premier League career with Manchester United and Everton.

He starred in blockbuster World Cup and European Championship advertising campaigns – not that Nike were able to use those specific words in that specific order – and turned his partnership with the American manufacturer into a significant fortune along with teammate and fellow Nike athlete Cristiano Ronaldo.

The process of fitting a player for new boots is a meticulous and secretive business, with labs and testing facilities reserved for staff with only the highest security clearance, lest an interloper get an unwanted peek at a top player and their boot doctor honing the tools of the trade.

Rooney made his name in Nike's T90 Laser boot, a popular silo among football boot aficionados and one that packs enough of a nostalgic pang that there are frequent calls for its reintroduction.

In 2009-10, he wore a personalised pair emblazoned with his WR10 designation and internally strengthened with a carbon plate in either boot.

The prolific striker preferred a six-stud configuration throughout his career and his custom T90 Laser II that season borrowed its soleplate from an earlier Nike boot in order to provide one.

United and Rooney won the Premier League in 2012-13, during which Rooney played in the last version of the boot, the T90 Laser IV. The ex-England striker later gave someone called 'Tays' a pair of his personalised boots from that season and, sure enough, the unique soleplate packed six studs.

Wayne Rooney (Image: Getty)

By then, the rest of Nike's roster was more liberally studded but Rooney's affection for a six-stud soft ground affair remained. When you're Wayne Rooney, Nike listens.

Rooney talked himself into trouble in 2022, admitting that he switched to longer studs in a match between United and Chelsea earlier in his career with the intention of doing harm to an opponent by writing the future into his metatarsals.

"For that game I changed them to big, long metal ones, the maximum length you could have," he told Sky Sports.

"I wanted to try and hurt someone, try and injure someone. John Terry left the stadium on crutches. I left a hole in his foot and then I signed my shirt to him after the game... and a few weeks later I sent it to him and asked for my stud back."