Dangerous ground as The Kid comes of age

Everton will resist the temptation to cash in on their prize asset as Moyes' future is inexorably linked to that of Rooney

A week of potentially intriguing cultural exchanges. First, Tory Boy, Michael Portillo, the member for Kensington and Chelsea, moving to Merseyside for a week to become a "single mum" to four children. Then we had Croxteth Boy, Wayne Rooney, reportedly lined up for a move to the multi-international footballing swap-shop in the Royal Borough. How would young Wayne integrate into that extended family, with all its extravagant tastes, assuming his club sanctioned it?

Certainly, if there was any truth in the story, it would be one of the more fascinating conversions since Paul Gascoigne renounced St James' Park for White Hart Lane and Rio Ferdinand departed Upton Park for Elland Road. Everton's manager, David Moyes, may describe such suggestions as "shite", as he did contemptuously after training on Friday, but every man has his price, even his employer, Everton's deputy chairman Bill - "any club would have to pay a king's ransom for a player like Rooney" - Kenwright.

The only problem for the theatre impresario, whose love for Everton is so heart-burstingly pronounced, is that Mr Abramovich can do rather better than that. He can raise an emperor's fortune. Everton could heal their financial difficulties at a stroke. And more. This will not be the end of the matter.

As Moyes talks at Bellefield, Everton's training ground, his millionaire performers head home in powerful saloons and four-wheel drives, most with tyres which are surely designed for grand prix cars and tractors, and with engines which growl like panthers. Among them, somewhat more sedately, two official drug-testers (no "forgetfulness" from the players here). Finally, a young man who is a study in insouciance, considering reports of his value dominate the back pages, as he departs in nothing more racy than a Ford Galaxy people- carrier. Could this 17-year-old, with a pugilist's bearing - and inclinations, according to his own testimony after England's tunnel contretemps in Turkey - really fetch £35m from Chelsea?

He is still 17, just, and the first biography on the Rooney phenomenon has been published. Not a particularly slim volume, either, running to 217 pages. It scarcely seems conceivable that he first announced all the hyperbole was justified with that winner against Arsenal at Goodison only a year ago this weekend.

Since then, he has undergone 12 months of scrutiny and analysis, with five England caps, including those two crucial ones won against Turkey; one red card, numerous yellows; the "gum-chewing, loose tie" incident at the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year awards; and a new three-year contract with Everton in January, in which his wages increased from £80 to £13,000 a week. He has already moved to a £500,000 house in upmarket Sandfield Park with his parents, Wayne Snr and Jeanette. Now he is rumoured to be setting up home with his girlfriend in footballers' wives territory. With the paparazzi constantly on his trail, stardust has been shaken on him just as surely as it was over David Beckham and Michael Owen.

Yet embracing the celebrity lifestyle can be an enormous distraction. Gascoigne couldn't handle it. Owen successfully circumvents it. Beckham appears to thrive on it. What will Wayne make of it? Next Friday, Rooney comes of age. At a party to celebrate, his new "friend" Robbie Williams will be a guest and sing a tribute to him, so we are told.

In a week's time, Rooney will have the right to vote, to buy a drink legally. Most importantly, where his club are concerned, he still has the right to remain silent. Thus far, he has been ring-fenced by the Ever-ton personnel. "As you all know, he's still quite a shy boy, still coming to terms with everything that's going on in his life. If I let him loose with you people just now, he'd be overwhelmed. But at some stage he'll develop and feel he's ready to talk to the media," Moyes says.

There are some wise counsels among those who laud him in unqualified terms who believe Rooney's success may all have been too much, too soon. That this player whom George Graham famously described as having "a man's body on a teenager's head" could be a spent force by his mid-twenties. There is, frankly, always that concern with a performer who is blessed with such vigour prematurely and is endowed with explosive pace. Can he possibly sustain his development and bring other virtues to it? As Pele, himself thrust into international fame at 17, warns: "Some players are exceptional when they are very young, then they fade and do not make it as far as you think."

Kenwright recalls Rooney's performance against Aston Villa in last year's FA Youth Cup final. "Christ. Incredible. Nobody had seen anything like it. Graham Taylor said to me, 'We'll buy him off you now', and he hadn't even played for the first team." Yet Taylor is one of the judges to query whether Rooney has peaked too early. Moyes candidly concedes: "I've got to say that is a concern of mine, too. I've said consistently, 'OK, it's important he's a good player when he's 17, but what's he going to be like when he's 27?' I'm doing everything I can to bring him on gradually. I've got to say, I don't think the level of publicity helps that."

Moyes then adds: "If the truth be told, Wayne probably isn't playing as well at the moment as he was this time last season. But I know what he's capable of because I watch him every day in training and he's absolutely terrific. At his age, he'll have peaks and troughs in his form."

Rooney's manager is also perturbed by the disciplinary record of his youngest first-team charge, epitomised by the yellow card meted out by Dermot Gallagher in Everton's last game at Tottenham, an act which produced a volley of abuse. "I'm personally disappointed with his lack of discipline and the number of cards he has got," says Moyes. "Wayne gets frustrated, but he knows he needs to improve."

You envy Moyes, and at the same time sympathise with his predicament. Does he capitalise on Rooney's capabilities now, at a time when Everton are having difficulty maintaining last season's momentum? Or does he employ him sparingly, but in the knowledge that Rooney, for all his entourage's declarations of faith to the cause on his behalf, will ultimately "want away" should the the club not rejoin the élite.

What can be stated with a degree of certainty is that Rooney's future is inexorably linked to Moyes's. If one goes, you suspect the other will, too. The latter is aware that only success "will stop everyone talking about our best players being sold to everyone else". But that £35m? Possibly more. It would enable him to purchase at least three top players. Could that not be viewed as a positive piece of trading? "I wouldn't like to answer that because it would start me speculating that we're going to sell him," says Moyes. "But it doesn't quite work like that, as you well know."

And, with that, he slips away. To continue creating a side that will go forward, into Europe initially, with his most prized asset still proudly clad in blue. The blue of Everton, not Chelsea.