Football: Are fans booing their own team and manager more?

Wayne Rooney, who made headlines in 2010 after lashing out at England fans for booing the team, remembers being booed a lot throughout his career.

“It’s always been there. Fans of course have their own opinions and sometimes they’re for you and sometimes they’re against you,” he said.

“It probably got a little more attention with more TV cameras, social media and phone calls from the stands.

“Of course if a player or a player’s family is being abused in stadiums it can become a bigger problem, but in general I think booing is okay.”

Like his former England team-mate, Joe Hart admits it’s all part of the game.

“You get booed by the away fans,” said Hart. “That’s normal, of course. In my day I probably got a few from the fans at home – not many. If I was getting booed I was probably doing something wrong!”

Both players think the booing has always been there. But did it affect them?

“Maybe it was then,” Hart says. “But I don’t have any scars, to put it that way. I was so focused on what I was doing, so whether it was applause or boos, it didn’t make any difference to how I was trying to play the game.”

Former Liverpool, Spurs and Fulham midfielder Danny Murphy also recalls difficult moments in his career.

“There was a lot of booing at Fulham when they were fighting relegation,” he explains. “You have to take it as a challenge. You have to want to go the other way and overcome it, rather than letting it get to you, drain your energy and add fear to your game.

“I’ve always thought it was a challenge to overcome that, to try to do better. I think if you’re playing football in the Premier League and you’re at that level, it’s your duty to do that.

“We all love hearing the fans chant your name when you score the winning goal or when the team wins; you can’t just have one and not the other.”