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Former England captain, Wayne Rooney. Barrington Coombs
Homeward Bound

Rooney determined to bring goals to Derby as he targets striking impact with Rams

The Championship side today confirmed that the former England captain would join the club in January.

LAST UPDATE | Aug 6th 2019, 7:19 PM

WAYNE ROONEY VOWED he has plenty to give as a player before becoming a full-time coach after the former England captain clinched a move to Derby County.

The record goalscorer for the Three Lions and Manchester United will see out the rest of the MLS season with DC United before teaming up with the Rams in January.

He has accepted a player-coach role with Derby, who began their Championship campaign with a win at Huddersfield Town on Monday.

That match was followed by the shock news that Rooney, 33, will arrive at Pride Park in January.

Rooney arrived in England on Tuesday and was paraded by Derby that day, when he said the chance to work under the club’s new head coach Phillip Cocu was “too good an opportunity to turn down”.

“I’m delighted to be back here and I’m looking forward to coming back in January and trying to help the team to push forward and hopefully push for promotion,” Rooney said.

Firstly, I’m a player. I feel I’ve a lot of qualities I can bring to the squad. I want to come in and play and help the team.

“Secondly, I want to try and learn off Phillip and his staff to gain experience for when I do stop playing and take that next step.”

Rooney wants to become a manager, like his former England colleagues Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard. The latter left Derby this summer to take charge at Chelsea.

But Rooney said repeatedly at his presentation that his immediate focus concerns driving success on the pitch through his actions rather than his instructions.

“Of course we all want to be like the great managers but that’s for the future,” he said in a press conference.

It’s what I want to do and I don’t want to keep talking about it but my main focus is playing and learning.

“With any new role, the first thing you want to do is learn that role and learn the best things to do and the things not to do.

“So I think that’ll be what I’m doing for the next 18 months and trying to learn good habits which coaches do. Of course I’ve played under some great managers – certainly towards the last five years you try to look at things in different ways with one eye on going into that role. I’ll keep trying to learn and give my best on the pitch.

I was lucky enough to have some very good, experienced players who helped me when I was a young player, so that’s a natural progression in football and now I’m at the end where I can hopefully help them and guide them.”

Rooney was also linked with Burnley, and he said recently there have been offers waiting that would have allowed him to go into coaching jobs whenever he wanted to go down that route.

He added: “There were options there – there were other clubs making offers and enquiring about me, but I made the decision to come here and that was it. I wasn’t going to go back on my decision.”

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