‘A big part of our success was playing the PSP’: Wayne Rooney credits Sony’s handheld for Man United’s performances

Ex-footballer Wayne Rooney has credited the Sony PSP as one of the reasons he enjoyed so much success with Manchester United.

Rooney was at Manchester United from 2004 to 2017, during which time the club won five Premier League titles, the FA Cup, three League Cups, four Community Shields, the Europa League and the Champions League.

Speaking on The Wayne Rooney Show podcast about the release of EA Sports FC 26 – a series on which he used to appear on the cover when it was known as FIFA, Rooney said: “I used to play a lot of FIFA and Call of Duty, [but] of late I’ve not played much. I’ve played with some of them YouTubers in Pro Clubs which was fun.”

When asked if he was any good at EA Sports FC, he jokingly replied: “Yeah, I’m brilliant, I reckon I could be in the top 100 in the world,” before conceding: “Nah, I’m alright, I’m okay.”

However, Rooney did then explain that during his playing career the Manchester United team played a lot of PSP together, something he actually credits for the success of the team during his time there.

“Do you know what we used to play? Not FIFA. True story, this, but at Man United I really believe a big part of our success was playing the PSP,” he explained.

“No, honestly, because it got us communicating more. We used to play it on the plane, on the team bus. You’d play 5v5, so it would be me, Rio [Ferdinand], Michael Carrick, John O’Shea, Wes Brown in 5v5. It was called SOCOM, on the PSP. Army game.

“You have to talk, you have to tactically be right, go and revive people when they get killed, and it was a massive part of our success, I believe. Ask any of them players who played it the same time, it was brilliant. And actually, how you played that game actually reflected that player, how they played the game, it was crazy.

“Michael Carrick was a little sneaky calm one – you’d be lying down hiding and hear a little grenade bouncing by where he’d thrown it. I was just all in, straight in frontline of the trenches, get in there. And that might surprise you, but that was a massive part of our success.”

Not every player bought into the idea, however. According to Rooney, the team’s goalkeeper wasn’t in favour of the club PSP session.

“Edwin van der Sar used to get annoyed, obviously, because we’re on the team bus for instance, and there’s just shouting all over the place, where you’re telling people where you are. And sometimes if they’ve got one player left, you’re trying to flank them and go and get them, so you’re communicating together. And van der Sar used to get annoyed and move, he used to try and get as far away from us as possible.”

Rooney’s comments echoed those of former teammates Rio Ferdinand and Ben Foster, who also cited SOCOM a few years back as one of the activities that brought the team closer together during an episode of the latter’s Fozcast podcast in 2023.

“We always used to play a game at United, on the PSP – for those younger listeners it was a handheld PlayStation,” Forster said. “We would play Socom, an old school Call of Duty. We used to spend hours on this game didn’t we?”

“If we were doing an hour’s journey,” Ferdinand replied, “that’s not long enough, you’d need a two or three-hour one so we can get amongst it. Two teams, 6v6 or 5v5, most of our squad other than the oldies like Gary Neville, Edwin and Giggsy.

“I actually still say part of us winning and our culture was down to that game, trust me. Because we were all together in it, hating each other at times and arguing, people throwing PSPs. It was unbelievable.”