MLS

D.C. United Roundtable: Will Wayne Rooney Score 20 Goals in 2019?

D.C. United Roundtable: Will Wayne Rooney Score 20 Goals in 2019?

The FloFC Staff answers the question about whether Wayne Rooney can become the third player in D.C. United history to score 20 league goals in a season.

Feb 14, 2019 by FloFC Staff
D.C. United Roundtable: Will Wayne Rooney Score 20 Goals in 2019?

Twenty-goal seasons in Major League Soccer used to be a rarity. When Luciano Emilio scored 20 in his debut campaign with D.C. United, it was just the eighth instance of a player reaching that mark in 12 MLS seasons. Emilio was the second Black-and-Red player to score 20 goals in a regular season, with Raul Diaz Arce hitting 23 in MLS’ inaugural season.

No D.C. player has come particularly close to that mark since. Dwayne De Rosario had 16 in 2011, but only 13 of those came with United. In the five years after Emilio’s 20-tally campaign, just Landon Donovan and Chris Wondolowski managed to break the same mark.

Since then, the number of players who have scored at least 20 league goals in an MLS season has exploded. In the past six seasons, on 16 occasions, a player has finished with 20 or more goals. Bradley Wright-Phillips has three of those instances, with David Villa also having two.

A 20-goal season seems like a reasonable goal for Wayne Rooney, who managed 12 goals in 20 games after his move in July. In his illustrious career in England, though, United’s captain only scored that many league goals in two seasons. Given that he’s no longer in his prime, finding that kind of form may be difficult over the course of an entire season. 

The question up for debate: In 2019, will Wayne Rooney score 20 or more goals in the MLS regular season? 

Wesley Davidson, FloFC Contributor: Is Wayne Rooney capable of tallying twenty or more goals in 2019? By all means. Can I predict with confidence that he will surpass that mark? Not so much.

If Rooney was a member of a number of sides across the league today, there’s no doubt in my mind he would shoulder the load and produce similar figures to Ibrahimovic for Los Angeles last season. However, his current squad is an entirely different animal.

As much as I’d love to see the 33-year-old bang in the amount of goals we’re speaking of, the fact that he doesn’t have to is a testament to D.C.’s talent and depth this season, as well as Rooney’s versatility. Few players have a nose for goal like Rooney, but what has impressed me even more is how he’s adapted his game over the past couple of seasons.

"Playing deeper suits me. I can get on the ball a bit more and have lads around me with more legs. I am the one who can get us playing and moving the ball”, Rooney said after studying the habits of Xabi Alonso and Toni Kroos. With the likes of Paul Arriola, Lucho Acosta, and new signing Lucas Rodriguez around him (all 24 years or younger), Rooney can enact this playing style to perfection.

The MLS season is a marathon and Ben Olsen has the luxury of being able to rotate to keep the squad fresh. The story will not be the sheer number of goals Rooney scores but rather the moments in which his quality in the box helps secure unexpected points. He finds the back of the net on 15 occasions and adds 10-12 assists.

Steven Streff, FloFC D.C. United Beat Writer: Why not? In 2018, after arriving in D.C., Rooney put to bed any questions people had about his commitment to play in MLS, or whether he’d still have the legs, given he surpassed the 800 games mark for his career late last year. And in doing so, Rooney scored 12 goals in 20 regular season games. 

That scoring rate over the course of a 34 game season would put him right at 20 goals. And while Rooney is unlikely to start every game this season, he will get the majority of minutes at striker if he’s healthy. And that should give him ample opportunities to become the third United player to score 20 league goals in a MLS season.

So long as Acosta and Arriola can replicate their form from 2018, and Rodriguez can seamlessly help replace Yamil Asad along with Zoltan Stieber, then there shouldn’t be any reason as to why Rooney couldn’t score at least 20 goals. Acosta especially, quickly meshed with Rooney, and was able to set up the English striker time after time. 

Given his quality, how United is poised for the upcoming season, and how well Rooney acclimated to the league last year, I think he’ll score at least 20 goals in 2019. It likely won’t be any more than 21 or 22, but Rooney will join Raul Diaz Arce and Luciano Emilio in United goal-scoring lore. 

Hunter Sharpless, FloFC Managing Editor: The first thing that pops into my head is another question: Does D.C. United want Rooney to score 20-plus goals this year? I guess they probably do. More Wayne goals means more return on Wayne investment, and probably healthy heaps of Wayne kits flying off the shelves at the very cool fan shop at Audi Field (which has the most insane hat wall ever). 

But in my head at least, I’m thinking of a really successful season for Rooney as sort of hybrid of his striker self and his attacking midfield self. Rather than see Wayne go for 23 goals and six assists, I think it’d be conducive for the team for Wayne to do 15 and 15 or something like that — Paul Arriola tallying a healthy amount, Luciano Acosta doing the same, and maybe a fourth offensive force stepping up through the course of the year, too (Lucas Rodriguez perhaps). 

I’ll agree with Mister Davidson on this one, because I do think some of the team’s focus will be on cultivating multiple serious goal-scoring threats, and that Rooney will do his part with that. I’ll say that No. 9 logs a solid 17 goals this year and hits double-digits in assists.