- published: 21 Aug 2015
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Wayne Mark Rooney (born 24 October 1985) is an English footballer who plays as a striker for Premier League club Manchester United and the England national team.
Rooney made his senior international debut in 2003 becoming the youngest player to represent England (a record later broken by Theo Walcott). He is England's youngest ever goalscorer. He played at UEFA Euro 2004 and scored four goals, briefly becoming the competition's youngest goalscorer. Rooney featured at the 2006 and 2010 World Cups and is widely regarded as his country's best player. He has won the England Player of the Year award twice, in 2008 and 2009. As of September 2011, he has won 73 international caps and scored 28 goals. Along with David Beckham, Rooney is the most red carded player for England, having been sent off twice.
Aged nine, Rooney joined the youth team of Everton, for whom he made his professional debut in 2002. He spent two seasons at the Merseyside club, before moving to Manchester United for £25.6 million in the 2004 summer transfer window. The same year, Rooney acquired the nickname "Wazza". Since then, with Rooney in the team, United have won the Premier League four times, the 2007–08 UEFA Champions League and two League Cups. He also holds two runner-up medals from both the Premier League and the Champions League. In April of the 2011–12 season Rooney scored his 180th goal, making him United's fourth highest goal-scorer of all time.
Lionel Andrés Messi (Spanish pronunciation: [ljoˈnel anˈdɾes ˈmesi], born 24 June 1987) is an Argentine footballer who plays in La Liga for FC Barcelona and is the captain of the Argentina national team, mainly as a forward.
By the age of 21, Messi had received Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year nominations. The following year in 2009 he won both the Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year, and won the inaugural FIFA Ballon d'Or in 2010 and 2011. He also won the 2010–11 UEFA Best Player in Europe Award. Messi is the fourth football player to win three Ballons d'Or, after Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini and Marco van Basten and the second player to win three consecutive Ballons d'Or, after Michel Platini. His playing style and small stature have drawn comparisons to Diego Maradona, who himself declared Messi as his "successor".
Messi has won five La Liga titles and three Champions League titles. In 2012, Messi made UEFA Champions League history by becoming the first player to score five goals in one match, in a 7–1 win against Bayer Leverkusen. With two goals in the next round against A.C. Milan, he matched José Altafini's record of 14 goals in a single UEFA Champions League/European Cup season. He also became the first player to top-score in four successive European Champion Clubs' Cup campaigns. He set the world record for most goals scored in a season during the 2011–12 season, with 73 goals.