Wayne's limitless world of potential

The new boy: Everton are desperate to keep secret a 16-year-old who has been likened to Shearer. Rooney, however, is set to make the Premiership big cats sit up and purr.

Wayne Rooney must be the most talked-about secret in English football. The harder his manager, David Moyes, tries to keep him under protective wraps, the more the teenager's fame and mystique grow.

For a 16-year-old, who has yet to play in the Premiership, the player they call "The Kid" is already something of an Everton legend at a club where they badly crave one. The t-shirts proclaim "Rooney – the real deal" and the chairman, Bill Kenwright, could not help himself when he broke the vow of silence around the home-grown hero and declared he was "the best thing around".

Best to recall at this stage that Rooney is just three months out of school and despite the impressive, sturdy shoulders, he is still young and raw to be carrying a football team's hopes. Yet to see him in action, pumping arms and legs, going past defenders almost twice his age, is to know that he is something special indeed.

Officially Moyes' party line is: "We try not talk about Wayne, we just want to let him get on with his progress and helping him all we can." But when relaxed and off the record Moyes and his backroom staff go all starry-eyed about the youngster. The coaches include Alan Irvine and Jimmy Lumsden, two other Glaswegians with romantic twinkles who enjoy comparing Rooney with great talents they have known, watched and worked with. In football's dream factory Rooney is even now filed under one of those potential greats.

As a player Moyes grew up in a Celtic youth side with Charlie Nicholas and comparisons between him and Rooney are in many ways appropriate as the one-time "Cannonball Kid" exploded to great heights and then crashed prematurely to earth. The Everton manager sees the likeness and recognises Rooney is better in most departments – apart from the elegant finishing Nicholas showed in his teens.

Meanwhile, Lumsden waxes lyrical about Kenny Dalglish and muses on the fact that in those heady Celtic days of yore the finest Scottish striker of his generation could be held back until Jock Stein felt the time was right. No such luxury for Everton this season, you fancy, especially with the poverty of choice and funds available.

Perhaps the most striking "new whatever" tag to be applied to Rooney is that from Irvine, the former Blackburn and Newcastle United youth director who sees a parallel with Alan Shearer. There can be no finer line to draw for any young player and Irvine knows what it took for Shearer to succeed and stay there.

Irvine, now Moyes' deputy at Goodison, reflected on Shearer's climb to the pinnacle of the game after he too had been a 16-year-old sensation at Southampton, scoring a hat-trick against Arsenal. Like Shearer, Rooney wants to shoot from everywhere and anywhere. Indeed, the nickname the former England captain earned at The Dell of "Clubby" – he liked clubbing the ball – would not be misplaced as Rooney's moniker.

Irvine, however, strikes a cautionary note about all young talent and he is qualified to speak after helping Damien Duff and David Dunn reach Blackburn and international level. "Alan Shearer was a hungry player and even now he just loves scoring goals, " he says. "He has kept that desire all of his life and that is what young hopefuls like Wayne have to do. There is no doubt about his ability, but you have to keep wanting to do it."

Rooney comes from the kind of working class stock that suggests he will keep up that edge for as long as possible. There are boxers in his family and the pugnacious prodigy has an edge to him that belies his years. In short, he can look after himself.

Everton also believe that Rooney will go on to become even more powerful than his awesome, young frame. They have charted his growth and feel there is more to come, with the only concern being that it is vertical and not horizontal. Rooney is wide enough already.

However, as Moyes and Irvine know, The Kid's meteoric path will depend on several other factors. He is already being fought over by two agents, a potential problem when new contracts are being finalised. It seems that everyone wants a piece of the action and Moyes' hush-hush approach is doomed to fail.

As a student of Sir Alex Ferguson, Moyes no doubt wishes he could give Rooney the Ryan Giggs cotton-wool treatment, but that is one gameplan that is unlikely to succeed. Such is the clamour for Rooney to play and be the instant answer to Everton's prayers that the secret will not be a secret any more. Instead he will be the type that had Doris Day seeking the highest hills to sing from.