He was briefly the youngest scorer at a European championship during Euro 2004 in Portugal, where his four-goal tally was ended by a broken bone in the quarter-final defeat by the hosts.

Last year's 27 million-pound (US$47.68 million) move to United, memorably celebrated with a Champions League hat-trick on his debut against Fenerbahce, has clearly enabled him to move up a level as a player.

Flourishing alongside the likes of Ryan Giggs, Cristiano Ronaldo and Ruud van Nistelrooy, Rooney finished his first season at Old Trafford as United's top scorer.

Ferguson now expects great things from Rooney, but Eriksson is hoping for football's biggest prize of all.

Owen impersonator

As a 12-year-old boy on a Croxteth housing estate, Rooney watched Michael Owen score a superb goal for England against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup. When the second-round match ended, Rooney pretended to be England's teenaged striker in a scratch game in the street with his friends.

Next year, Rooney will line up alongside Owen at the start of what many believe is England's best chance of winning the World Cup since 1990, if not 1966.

(China Daily 10/26/2005 page15)