Moyes on Rooney's talent and how Everton job 'felt right'
· Yahoo Sports
Everton boss David Moyes says a teenage Wayne Rooney was "the last of the street footballers" in the English game.
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During Moyes' first spell in charge of the Toffees, he gave the striker his professional debut at just 16 years old.
Speaking on The Wayne Rooney Show about his first thoughts on the player, Moyes said: "He was a cheeky Scouser but also an unbelievable talent.
"We were saying: 'He can't be that good at that age.' I was actually getting a lot of criticism from the media because we had other good centre-forwards at the time. Kevin Campbell Tomasz Radzinski, quite a few others - Big Duncan [Ferguson] was still around and trying to get Wayne in the team wasn't easy, because they were senior players.
"A couple of times I had to play him off the left in the early days, but I say this to the young players: 'Often you don't get the big gig in your team where you play.'
"The talent Wayne had was the bit which we found really difficult because he was also physically equipped to play in men's football, which was really, really strange for someone so young.
"But he was a brilliant talent. We used to talk about street footballers in this country. For me, Wayne was the last of the street footballers, or certainly the last of the ones I know of."
Moyes also touched on how he felt when he first took the Goodison Park job back in 2002.
"I had a brilliant opportunity to manage Everton," he said. "At that time, I had been getting offered quite a few jobs to go to other Premier League clubs.
"I went to see Sir Alex [Ferguson] a few times about [other] jobs that had been offered and he said: 'No, I don't think you should take that job.'
"I had the chance to become Manchester United assistant manager before that as well and it didn't pan out, so when Everton came along it just felt right at the time."
Find this episode of The Wayne Rooney Show on YouTube, BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds