GIFT OF THE GOB!

Today’s Premier League footballers are accorded the same degree of celebrity as movie idols and rock stars.

Not for them the humble act of travelling on public transport with supporters, something that was fit for the great names of previous playing generations. Instead, they’ve become used to stretch limos and bodyguards…just to get to the shops!

With high profile in soccer’s current climate go astronomically large wages and, one could argue, a great responsibility to behave. So, it is with not a little disappointment that one of England’s heroes has recently been visited by a bit of bother.

Not chastened by the volume of bad press landing at the feet of his mahogany-skinned, want-away team-mate, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney literally had something of a spat with a photographer outside a swish London eaterie.

Rooney’s riposte to being snapped after a meal with new wife Coleen was to spit down the paparazzo’s back. There was certainly phlegm but the reaction was hardly phlegmatic, particularly from a talented player urged by coach and sponsors to keep his cool in challenging situations on and off the pitch.

For someone whose feats with his feet have become so feted since he made his debut as a 16-year-old, getting quizzed by the cops after an unsavoury incident will not derail Rooney’s career.

But bearing in mind the extent to which he is admired by young fans of all clubs in Britain and beyond, it would be advisable for his handlers to recommend he counts to ten in future before letting fly with the kind of volley which allegedly wasn’t aimed at the back of a net but the back of a media man instead. After all, the whole business does leave a nasty taste in the mouth.