Wayne Rooney Admitted He Changed Studs To Hurt a Chelsea Player - John Terry Was His Victim

· GiveMeSport

Wayne Rooney once admitted to changing his studs in order to hurt a Chelsea player during the 2005/06 Premier League title race.

Say what you want about Wayne Rooney , but the former Manchester United forward was a winner. Above all else, the thing that drove the England superstar to the level he reached was his desire to walk away with as many medals and as much silverware as possible.

That obsession sometimes saw Rooney step over the line in order to get what he wanted, or lash out when things weren't going his way. This was especially the case in his younger years when the Liverpudlian was the embodiment of an aggressive street footballer .

One such example of this came when he admitted to wearing longer studs to hurt a Chelsea player during the Blues' Premier League title battle with United in the 2005/06 season - something that would ultimately backfire on Rooney himself.

Cast your minds back to April 29, 2006. Alex Ferguson's Red Devils made the trip to Stamford Bridge knowing that defeat to Jose Mourinho's league leaders would officially hand the title to the Blues. The thought of this alone was enough to infuriate Rooney, who admitted during an Amazon Prime documentary that he had planned to let his anger out by causing as much pain as he could.

> "I remember the game. I changed my studs to put longer studs in because I wanted to hurt someone,"

Rooney stated.

> "If Chelsea won a point, they would win the league. At the time, I couldn't take it. The studs were legal. They were legal size, but they were bigger than what I would normally wear."

Watch the challenge below:

As it turned out, the man who would face the Wazza's wrath was England international teammate John Terry . Rooney reminisced:

> "I remember a 50/50 with John Terry and I've gone right over the ball. Right on the top of his foot he had a big hole. He was on crutches after the game."

He added, per the Daily Mail:

> "If you look back on the pictures after the game, JT is celebrating - but he’s on crutches from that tackle. We knew if Chelsea won then they had won the league that day, but you knew they would win because you could feel they were a better team at that time. > > “It was more frustration from the time. Jose Mourinho was there, JT, Lamps [Frank Lampard] and they had a great team. I just knew it would get to me, that I could boil over and it was almost a protection of myself, but also a feeling that if you can’t win then not let them enjoy it as much as they want to.”

GIVEMESPORT Key Statistic: Wayne Rooney played against John Terry 28 times, winning on nine occasions and losing 12 times.

While Rooney may have achieved what he set out to, the decision to wear the studs would ultimately backfire. Later in the game, he tripped while bearing down on goal and broke his metatarsal, putting his place in the 2006 World Cup squad in doubt.

Although he was included and did feature that summer, he was far from 100% fit and was a shadow of himself when the country had hoped he would be the man to lead them to glory.

Despite Rooney's admission over the deliberate nature of his challenge on Terry, the legendary defender doesn't hold a grudge against his former international colleague. Taking to Instagram in 2022 to do a Q&A with fans, the former Chelsea skipper was asked whether he cared about Rooney's comments. He answered.

> "Of course not. We know each other well enough and had many battles over the years. Two stitches at half-time, there was no way I wasn't coming out for the second half to win the league beating Man Utd 3-0."

Terry ultimately got the last laugh as he finished the campaign lifting his second consecutive Premier League title as Chelsea finished eight points clear of second-placed United.

All statistics courtesy of Transfermarkt - accurate as of 24/10/2026 .

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