Wayne Rooney reveals he wooed wife Coleen with love poems

Wayne Rooney has a romantic side, revealing in a new documentary about his life that he wooed his future wife Coleen with love poems.

Speaking in his upcoming Amazon Prime documentary Rooney, the footballer, 33, looks back on his 20 year relationship with Coleen, who he told he would marry when they were 12-years-old. 

The couple, who are now parents to four boys, grew up together in the Liverpool district of Croxteth, with Wayne persuading a reluctant Coleen to go on a date when they were 16. 

Speaking about their teenage romance, Wayne says in the documentary: ‘I think when I was about 11 or 12 I knew that I wanted to marry her, and I said that to her at the time. I said ‘when we grow up we’re going to get married and you’re going to have our kids’. She was looking at me like ‘yeah good one!”

Coleen agrees, admitting of her husband: ‘He’s a charmer, growing up that’s how he won me over. The more I said no the more he said ‘I will one day get that date’.’

Coleen remembers a young Wayne as ‘cheeky, full of confidence, always up to something… I always remember he used to hang around by where I lived and every now and again you’d get his mum shouting up and down the street, ‘Wayne!’

Wayne’s charm came in the form of poems, with Wayne insisting ‘I was quite romantic.’ He then reveals that one of the poem’s was called ‘Wiggle Wiggle’, but he can’t remember how it goes. 

Coleen has kept the teenage poems, telling the camera ‘they’re very romantic, you can tell he loves me.’

Wayne and Coleen began dating aged 16 and went on to marry in a lavish ceremony in Portofino in 2008. They are now parents to four sons – Kai, 12, Klay, eight, Kit, six, and Cass, three. 

Appearing on Thursday’s Good Morning Britain to promote the documentary, Wayne was asked about his poems, telling the ITV show: ‘I like writing poems. When we go to bed I’d leave one on the table for her to read when she wakes up.’

Later in the documentary Wayne and Coleen are seen overseeing renovations on their new mansion in Cheshire, while looking back on the first home they shared together aged 17 in Formby, Merseyside.   

‘The thought of it was all fine and great, but obviously you were away every weekend and I used to leave my mum’s and cry all the way home to mine,’ Coleen says. ‘It was all of a sudden and it was a matter of months, everything just happened.’

‘We’ve always grown up quicker than what we were meant to I think. We’ve had to try and be more sensible than most people and be aware of situations and what’s going on around us.’    

The couple are also seen speaking honestly about the issues they have faced in their marriage, including Wayne’s notorious brothel visits and escort scandal.

Wayne’s wife of 14 years insists in the film that ‘I wouldn’t be standing here if I hadn’t forgiven him,’ as she reflects on their 20 year relationship. 

Reflecting on the difficult times, Coleen concedes: ‘The first time, we were young so there was a lot of arguing.’

Admitting she didn’t approve of the company Wayne was keeping as a young footballer, Coleen insists: ‘I knew groups that Wayne was hanging around with that weren’t good for him. Lovely people but together, with alcohol, not good and I told him that from day one.

‘I didn’t want him to stop being friends with them but I didn’t want him to go out with them because they got in bad situations.

‘Alcohol is a lot to blame and still is, up to this day with things that has happened recently. It’s not a good thing for Wayne to be unsupervised’.

Wayne is also seen discussing the period, admitting: ‘I put myself in the wrong place and when you’re in the wrong place and there’s alcohol involved you’re gonna make bad decisions and you’re going to have to suffer and deal with the consequences’.

‘That’s what happened, it doesn’t take away any of my love for Coleen, it happened. It was a wrong decision to make, I held my hands up and we worked through it.’

Rooney is released on Amazon Prime on Friday February 11.