Manchester United legend Wayne Rooney has come out to share how he overcame a lack of formal education.
He recently had his say during the first episode of his new BBC production, “The Wayne Rooney Show.”
Rooney made Everton’s matchday squad for the first time in April 2002, just about the time his schooling should have been reaching its conclusion with GCSEs, but the teen prodigy failed to sit for exams and left school without any qualifications.
Fast forward to 2025, it doesn’t matter much, because Wayne went on to make almost 900 career appearances over the subsequent 19 years and has amassed a personal fortune estimated to be worth £170 million ($230m).
Discussing what he considers the biggest misconception about him on his show, Wayne revealed that he went to great lengths to learn about subjects that would help him bond and communicate with teammates during his career.
According to him, some people who knew him assumed he was not educated because he did not sit for his GCSE exams, so he decided to educate himself on several things outside of football.
“It’s no secret, I didn’t even take GCSEs. I didn’t sit any. People assume, because of that, that I’m not educated, which I think is really wrong. I’ve actually made a conscious effort, when I was at Everton and then joined Manchester United, to educate myself on a lot of different things,” Rooney said.
Rooney further noted that he embraced learning because he wanted to be able to converse with his teammates from different backgrounds.
Wayne concluded by saying that it was a good decision because we all need education in our lives.
“Black history, on religion. The reason I’ve done that was I wanted to be able to hold conversations with my teammates who are maybe from different backgrounds.
Obviously over the last years it’s come out more that people should educate themselves more. That’s something I’d done to help me with my teammate and understand how they’ve been brought up, what life they’ve been brought up on. I think that’s probably something which people don’t understand [about me],” he added.
