ROONEY SIGNS FIVE BOOK DEAL

Everyone knows Wayne Rooney has a way with words. Usually very short ones, consisting mainly of asterisks, like this recent verbal sally aimed at a Premiership referee and faithfully recorded by the tabloids: "You f***ing t*** ... you're a f***ing disgrace." Now the England and Manchester United star will have to find about 500,000 more words to fulfil the biggest deal in the history of sports publishing - a £5m advance from HarperCollins for a five-volume autobiography over the next 12 years.

Sir Winston Churchill's Nobel prize-winning memoirs of the second world war only ran to six volumes, so Rooney, 21 in October, and who has only played top-flight football for four years, will have his work cut out.

His role model should be his England captain David Beckham, another footballer for whom verbal dexterity never came easily. Beckham was paid £2m by HarperCollins for his first book, My Side, which has sold 850,000 English language versions, making it the UK's biggest selling sports autobiography.

Rooney, whose favoured bedtime reading is JK Rowling's Harry Potter series, has never read Beckham's tome, but at least knows what is expected because he has read "bits of Gazza's and Robbie Fowler's and Giggsy's autobiographies". His first volume will have to be written - or more accurately, coaxed out of him by his ghostwriter - by mid-July. If the publisher's gamble pays off, it will conclude with Rooney's triumphant role in a victorious England World Cup campaign in Germany.

Some of the earlier chapters may provide thinner pickings, despite Rooney's optimism. "I'm excited about this deal," he said yesterday. "It's a big thing for me. Hopefully, there will be a lot of things to read about. The first book will cover from when I was just one to just after the World Cup. The rest of the deal will hopefully take me to the end of my playing career ... it's something I just wanted to do."