Raging Sir Alex Ferguson 'wanted to kill' Sven-Goran Eriksson over Wayne Rooney selection

Sven-Goran Eriksson has revealed Sir Alex Ferguson threatened 'to kill him' if he chose to take then- Manchester United talisman Wayne Rooney to the 2006 World Cup with England.

Rooney was a key figure for both club and country 16 years ago and had the nation's nerves on a knife edge when he injured himself during the tail-end of the 2005/06 season just months before the Three Lions World Cup campaign in Germany.

His spell on the side-lines stemmed from an incident during a title-deciding clash with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge which Rooney has since admitted he donned longer than usual studs for as he wanted to "hurt someone."

"I always wore the old plastic studs with the metal tip and for that game I changed into big, long metal ones, the maximum length you could have because I wanted to try to hurt someone, to try to injure someone,” conceded United's record goal-scorer.

“The studs were legal, they were a legal size, but they were bigger than what I would normally wear.”

While Rooney was successful in his quest to injure an opponent after clattering into John Terry, his studs may have also been responsible for the injury he gave himself.

Another particularly thunderous challenge from Rooney backfired for the former United forward and left his World Cup hopes dangling by a thread.

"I blame myself for that injury," the ex-England international has since admitted as part of a new documentary, ‘Rooney’, which will be released by Amazon Prime.

"I think if you look at it back by front studs have got caught in the ground, and my foot has bent forward. I broke three metatarsals."

The sight of Rooney writhing around in agony was a cause for concern for both Ferguson and Eriksson and led to communication between the