Wayne Rooney Caught Smoking a Cigarette

We've avoided going into detail about Wayne Rooney's recent million-pound wedding and blow-out bachelor party around here, mostly because it's not nearly as interesting as EURO 2008, and quite frankly, the visuals are horrifying.

This little tidbit, however, might have Manchester United concerned. The Daily Mirror recently published this photo showing Rooney appearing to have a lit cigarette in his hand.

Now, I won't go into a long rant about how alcohol and cigarettes don't spark the outrage that other drugs do. The issue here should be obvious. For a world class athlete who makes a living running around at breakneck pace for 90 minutes at least once a week, smoking just seems like a really, really bad idea. No Premier League player wants to do anything that would limit his lung capacity -- not if he wants to keep making those huge paychecks, anyway.

It's the kind of thing that makes you wonder if, in the future, we'll end up talking about Rooney the same baseball fans talk about Mickey Mantle. "He was a great player. Too bad he never took care of himself."

(H/T: The Offside)