Wayne Rooney gives motivational speech to his DC United players

Footage has emerged of Wayne Rooney giving an impassioned speech to his DC United players, after their dreadful MLS season in 2022.

Rooney hung up his boots as a player in January 2021, to become full time manager of Derby County, a role that wasn't easy at all.

He had to try and get them through a period of mass financial issues and points deductions and couldn't keep them from going down to League One at the end of last season.

That's when he decided to move on and return back to DC United, where he'd played before his spell at Derby, despite the club actually breaking league rules to get him in.

Things didn't go well for the Washington based club throughout the season however, and they actually finished bottom of the Eastern Conference, with just 27 points.

With the new season not that far away, Rooney is clearly very motivated for his side not to finish bottom again, as the footage of his motivational speech below shows.

"How are we going to improve day to day? There's different things: of training sessions, of games, game management," the 37-year-old can be heard saying.

"The lads who were here last year, you already know, you heard me talking about it all the time.

"The f***ing mentality every single day has to be right. That belief every single day has to be right. Cos if it's not, you might as well go home now.

"That mentality has to be at a f***ing high level for us to perform every week. It's a tough, tough league. There are some very good teams in the league. And we have to compete this year. We have to have that f***ing desire to be successful."

He continued, "We have to stay together as a group. So just a reminder, if we stay together, we're a f***ing good team.

"We've got time now to work on how I want to play, how we want to evolve as a team, improve and how we want to get better. How we want to be successful. Because there's no chance I'm finishing bottom of that f***ing league again."

Rooney hasn't had a great start to life as a manager in America. Image: Alamy

Adding belief to his squad, Rooney finished by saying, "There's a lot of history at this club. It's the most successful in the MLS. We need to get back to that. And we can. I think we will.

"But it's on you to do that. You need to believe in yourselves. It's the most important thing. Believe in yourself as an individual, believe in your team-mates and believe in yourselves as a group. And you can do that."

Despite the fact that he didn't have a good season as manager, Rooney was linked with a return to Everton as manager, to replace Frank Lampard.

He is reportedly on a shortlist, should the Toffees decide to do away with the former England manager in the near future.

If that happened it would continue the men's national team's joint all time top goalscorer's managerial path of recreating his playing career in reverse.

That would mean that he'd next return to Old Trafford, presumably to takeover from Erik ten Hag, that seems somewhat more unlikely right now, but who knows...

Topics: Wayne Rooney, MLS, USA, DC United

Ryan Sidle

Ryan is a journalist for SPORTbible with over eight years of experience. Passionate about all sports, he mainly covers football and F1 - Daniel Ricciardo once spent an entire interview referring to him as 'Ryan Gosling,' still his proudest moment.

@Sidler28