I locked Coleen out for putting Liverpool flags up – Rooney

Wayne Rooney played in several Merseyside derbies but never won one

The Merseyside derby takes place on Saturday – a fixture that runs deeper than most footballing rivalries and one that divides families, as boyhood blue Wayne Rooney knows only too well.

From a family of Evertonians, Rooney featured in the derby for the Toffees over two spells in his career and was also involved in multiple high-profile matches against Liverpool for Manchester United, scoring a winner at Anfield in 2005.

However, his wife Coleen's allegiance lies with the reigning Premier League champions and Rooney says his disdain for Liverpool led to him locking her out after she hung flags out of their old family home when the Reds lifted the league title in 2019-20.

"When Liverpool won the Premier League a few years ago I came home, I was [a player] at Derby at the time, and Coleen's got Liverpool flags up outside the house," said Rooney, speaking on his BBC podcast The Wayne Rooney Show.

"It was our old house, so outside the front door there's a little balcony thing and the flag was outside the window there, so I told her to go and get it down.

"She went up and you had to actually climb out the window to get it down, so she went up and I locked her out."