Wayne Rooney is in the news, as you may have heard, although it is debatable whether he has been out of it for three years. October 2002 was the month when he was transformed from a precocious 16-year-old to the bearer of a nation’s hopes with a spectacular winner against Arsenal. Van Nistelrooy had enjoyed a sneak preview 12 days earlier while playing for United against Everton.

“He came on at Old Trafford against us,” Van Nistelrooy recalled yesterday, eyes sparkling at the memory. “All of a sudden he just turned and took on Mikaël (Silvestre) and Rio (Ferdinand). That moment is always with me. It was like ‘whooah’.”

One bullish charge made such an impression that, when Rooney returned the next season and was roundly jeered, Van Nistelrooy instinctively went to reassure his young opponent. “I walked over next to him and just said, ‘Don’t worry about it, play your own game’.

“I don’t know why. You look at him, you want to help him. There was something about him even though he was on the other side.”

Rooney has felt an admonishing slap rather than a consoling arm since his dismissal in midweek against Villarreal. Van Nistelrooy is not about to divulge dressing-room secrets — to do so is to risk banishment from Old Trafford — but it is clear that reports of Sir Alex Ferguson’s hairdryer blowing a fuse are accurate.

“Wayne knows what happened in Spain. And he’s been told, obviously. That’s normal and he knows himself. He has to be told, but that’s it. Don’t make it bigger than it is. You can say whatever you want but it is not nasty things (he does). It is the things that young people can do who are at this top level already and have the spotlight on them every day. Eventually there won’t be things like this any more.

“You can’t begin to compare our situations at 19 years old. At his age, I was playing in the first division in Holland. It was gradual for me but even then it felt like big steps. It felt huge, the biggest step ever, coming to United — and I was 24. To deal with that isn’t easy. For him and Cristiano Ronaldo, they have no choice other than to mature in a split second. I had years to do that.”

Until his 21st birthday, Rutgerus Johannes Martinius van Nistelrooy was playing for Den Bosch in front of 1,000 fans or, as he remarks, “1,100 on a good day”. When he faced the mighty Ajax in a cup tie as a teenager, he had to dash from his college studies to catch the team bus.

Travelling the slow road to success did not do him any harm because, having moved up to PSV Eindhoven, he scored a remarkable 60 goals in 57 league games. Although he then missed a year with a knee ligament injury, he returned as sharp as ever. His first three seasons at United yielded 68 Premiership goals.

So far so prolific, but the past 16 months have marked a downturn in Van Nistelrooy’s fortunes. On top of the injuries that wrecked last season, he was forced to come out and deny that he was looking to slip out of the back door at Old Trafford after his agent was spotted loitering around some of the leading Spanish clubs.

Terrace mistrust was never audibly transmitted to the striker — unlike the case of Ferdinand — but Van Nistelrooy was sufficiently concerned that he went on television with his manager to present a United front.

“With the combination of what was being said and my performances, people were looking at the games and probably thinking my head was somewhere else,” he said. “I noted it, definitely. You just get that feeling. The fans have always been good but you just get those different vibes when you are out and about.