WAYNE ROONEY smoked cigarettes and drank beer with other players while on England international duty, according to an explosive new book by one of his Three Lions teammates.
Former Newcastle and Liverpool striker Andy Carroll has lifted the lid on secrets from inside the England camp, including how Rooney invited stars to join him for the drinking session during a training camp.
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In exclusive extracts from Andy’s autobiography Owning It, he calls Rooney “one of the good guys” who was “normal” and “very, very funny”.
Andy, who also played for West Ham, got his first England call-up in 2010 under strict Italian boss Fabio Capello.
He writes of Rooney: “He’d call me at two in the afternoon and say, ‘Andy, my room, now’. ‘Nah’, I’d say, ‘not now Wazza, it’s too early’.
“But he’d always bully me into submission. I’d find him lying on his bed watching TV, smoking (his lips would sometimes be bulging with snus — smokeless tobacco — as well) and swigging a bottle of beer.
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“He’d be surrounded by cartons of fags, crates of lager and bottles of wine (which he got the hotel manager to deliver to his room), and soon his room would be full of players. No one got smashed, it was just Wazza’s way of breaking the monotony with a couple of drinks, which was preferable to lying on our beds and staring at the walls.”
According to Carroll’s book, the “get togethers” happened around 2010-2011, during Cappello’s time as the England manager.
Despite the Italian coach’s reputation as a tough disciplinarian, Carroll’s book details how the squad managed to unwind behind closed doors.
And in another extract, he reveals a prank Rooney, now 40, played on the England team physio Rod Thornley, in front of him and midfielder Steven Gerrard.
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Carroll writes: “When I told Wazza about the three-man lift prank (when two players hold someone down while another sits on him) he got very excited and exclaimed, “We’ve got to get Rod Thornley.”
The “joke” involved Rooney — who scored 53 Three Lions goals and won 120 caps — sitting on top of Thornley on the physio-room treatment table, according to Andy.
Carroll, who now plays for National League South side Dagenham and Redbridge, says: “Rod was screaming, me and Gerrard were crying laughing, and Wazza had never looked so pleased with himself.”
Andy made his debut for England in a 2-1 friendly defeat against France at Wembley in November 2010, months after the Three Lions had crashed out of the World Cup in a last-16 defeat to Germany.
He featured in the same squad as Rooney — who went on to be England skipper and is now a TV pundit — 11 times as he made nine appearances for the national team.
In the book, No9 Carroll reveals that England’s so-called “Golden Generation” was plagued by a North-South divide.
The Three Lions had star players including Rooney, Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole, John Terry, Ashley Cole and Jamie Carragher at the time, but failed to win any major silverware.
Geordie Carroll writes: “When I turned up to my first England camp, I was properly anxious.
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CAPELLO IN MIX-UP OVER GRANNY SEX
IN an embarrassing incident, Andy Carroll reveals England’s then- manager Fabio Capello appeared to confuse him with another player.
Recounting how Capello enlisted the services of his centre-back to discipline him, the striker writes: “One evening, John Terry knocked on my door. ‘The gaffer wants a word’, he said.
“ ‘What, why?’ I said, confused.
“ ‘He’s not happy with your behaviour outside of football.’ ”
“I later found out John had gone to Capello and said he needed to speak to me because I was out of control.
“No sooner had I walked into this meeting with Capello than he started berating me. ‘You’re always in the media for drinking and sleeping with grannies,’ he said.
“I was thinking, ‘What is this fella on about? Has he got me mixed up with one of my teammates?’
“In the end, I just had to accept it. ‘Yeah all right,’ I said. ‘It won’t happen again.’ ”
“These guys were known by every football fan, and I looked up to every one of them.
“It was a bit like your first week at secondary school. There were even rival gangs.
“The lads from the northern clubs would sit on one side of the room and lads from southern clubs would sit on the other side — apart from one rogue Man United player who’d sit with the southern group because he didn’t want to sit with the Liverpool players.
“There were players who literally didn’t speak to each other and were reluctant to pass to each other in training.
“It’s depressing to think that England didn’t give themselves a proper chance of winning anything during that period because of those petty rivalries within the group. I got the impression the southern players looked down on the northern players.
“In the end, I gravitated towards the northern group.”
Explaining life under Capello, Carroll says: “The gaffer Fabio was slightly crazy. One day me and Ashley Young decided to head down for a meeting 15 minutes early.
“I was sitting on the floor looking at my phone when Capello walked in, marched over and snatched it out of my hand.
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“ ‘We are trying to work here’, he barked. ‘You’re disrespectful f***ing using your phone’.
“With that, he threw the phone at my chest.
“I thought, ‘I’m 15 minutes early for your meeting, what is your problem?’ Ashley, who had hidden his phone up his shirt, looked terrified.”
He added: “Capello would let us have a glass of wine and dessert with lunch and dinner — chocolate cake, ice cream, whatever — but wouldn’t allow ketchup.
“It made no sense — why wine and dessert but no ketchup?”
Carroll, whose career has been plagued by injuries, made the England Euros 2012 squad after missing out on the World Cup two years earlier.
He scored in a thrilling 3-2 win over Sweden in the group stages but the Three Lions, by this time led by manager Roy Hodgson, crashed out in the quarter-finals on penalties to Italy.
Talking about that shootout failure, Carroll writes: “I got flak after the game for not taking a penalty but I had no say in it. I don’t recall anyone announcing who would take the first five in an actual shootout.
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“And against Italy, (coach) Gary Neville just pointed at players and said, ‘One, two, three, four, five — you’re our penalty takers’.
His picks included Ashley Young and Ashley Cole, neither of whom were strikers, even though me and Theo Walcott were on the pitch.
“As it was, the two Ashleys missed and (Italy’s midfielder Andrea) Pirlo scored the naughtiest penalty I’ve ever seen — a little dink down the middle — and we were out.
“Getting knocked out was horrible. Imagine being nine days into a two-week holiday, having a total blast and someone kicking your door down, turfing you out of the hotel, dragging you on to a bus and whisking you to the airport. It was a bit like that.”
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SWEATING SULLIVAN’S SICK BRAG
WHEN Andy signed for West Ham he visited then-chairman David Sullivan, and recounts an odd conversation.
He was on loan there in 2012, then made permanent a year later.
Sullivan, 77, was accused of sexually exploitative and predatory behaviour – which he denies – by the BBC in June and has stepped down from roles at the Hammers.
Carroll writes: “My first port of call was David Sullivan’s massive gaff in Essex.
“When his housekeeper opened the front door she said, ‘He’s exercising at the moment, take a seat in his office’.
“Sullivan appeared after about 20 minutes wearing an oversized Dolce & Gabbana hoodie and sweating like a racehorse. He said to me, ‘Did my housekeeper say I was exercising?’
“ ‘Yeah,’ I said.
“ ‘Look out the window.’ I did as I was told and saw a girl of 18 or 19 getting into a taxi. ‘That’s who I’ve been exercising,’ he added triumphantly.”
Last night Wayne Rooney said: “I don’t normally comment on falsehoods written about me — but I will address this one.
“Andy knows that he and I never really socialised. I bumped into him once, coincidentally, whilst on a holiday — but that’s about it.
“As for this ‘tale’ about me drinking on England duty, it’s a complete fabrication.
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“I don’t know where the story comes from. It’s disappointing.”
- Owning It by Andy Carroll is out on September 24 and available for pre-order now (Macmillan, £22).