Benfica vs. Manchester United: Wayne Rooney Headed for Historic Campaign

Wayne Rooney's play is approaching unparalleled levels. By the end of this season, his talent will defy all comparisons.

Rooney is in top form early in the 2011/12 campaign. He has eight goals in six games played. Defenses are focusing in on Rooney, and yet he is still breaking them down at a remarkable rate. When he isn't creating scoring opportunities for himself, he is opening things up for his teammates.

Rooney's sparkling play is drawing high praise. That high praise starts with his coach, Sir Alex Ferguson. Ferguson is quoted on telegraph.co.uk:

“In terms of a Brazilian, if you look at Pele, he was a very aggressive attacker who could also look after himself and so can Rooney,” Ferguson said. “They have similarities that way: strength, speed, determination.

“But he’s white. Completely white!”

Color of his skin aside, Rooney's play deserves the lofty comparisons. He is an absolute force. His physicality is unmatched, he wears down opponents and then lets his supreme conditioning take over.

It is hard for any player on the pitch to keep up with Rooney's jaw-dropping pace for 90 minutes. This conditioning is going to serve him well over the course of the season.

His prolific production is not going to suffer a drop off, and Ferguson touched on this as he continued with his lofty comparisons:

“Whether it’s a Gascoigne, George Best, Bobby Charlton, Denis Law—the similarities are that the boy [Rooney] has great courage, he wants to play all the time and he has incredible stamina. These are added extras to the talent he has.”

This promises to be such a magical season for Rooney that people are going to run out of comparisons, and they will be relegated to just calling him Rooney.