Wayne Rooney reveals he wore longer studs to ‘hurt’ a Chelsea player during Manchester United title clash

Wayne Rooney admits he wore longer studs for Manchester United’s Premier League title clash with Chelsea in 2006 so that he could ‘hurt’ an opposition player.

The match was a must-win for United in order to keep their title hopes alive as they were nine points behind Jose Mourinho’s side with three games to go.

United’s chances of overtaking Chelsea were slim and Rooney concedes that he ‘couldn’t take’ the idea of watching his rivals clinch the title at Stamford Bridge.

So he opted to swap his normal studs for longer ones in order to inflict more damage.

‘I changed my studs before the game,’ Rooney revealed in the upcoming documentary ‘Rooney’, which will be released on Amazon Prime on Friday.

‘I put longer studs in because I wanted to hurt someone.’

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John Terry ended up on the receiving end of a nasty challenge from Rooney as the United forward stamped on the Chelsea captain’s foot.

‘If Chelsea won a point, they won the league,’ Rooney said during the documentary.

‘At that time, I couldn’t take it.

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

But it wasn’t enough as Chelsea went on to win 3-0 and secure the Premier League title.

Rooney also blamed himself as he suffered a metatarsal injury which nearly ruled him out of the World Cup just a few months later.

Rooney was not fully fit for the tournament and missed the first game in Group B as England crashed out to Portugal in the quarter-finals.

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