Wayne Rooney has angrily hit back at reports he got into a hotel lift with a mystery woman after a night out.
The footballer was spotted in a hotel lobby with the woman after seven hours of partying in Vancouver, Canada, last weekend, when he was also seen with his arms around a woman in a nightclub.
Responding to the reports on Twitter today, he wrote: ‘Nothing happened between me and any girl on that night in Vancouver. I did not enter the lift alone with the girl pictured in the hotel foyer.
‘The girl pictured in the club was simply one of many who innocently asked for photographs and pictures.’
Rooney said on Twitter that a woman he was seen speaking to in a nightclub was a fan asking for an autograph (left); and denied getting into a lift with a woman in a hotel lobby (right)
Rooney, 33, was in Vancouver with his current side DC United, which he is due to quit at the end of the MLS season to join Derby County as a player coach.
The photographs showed the striker with his arms around a mystery brunette inside one of two nightclubs he visited, before joining her in the back of a car.
Later, the football ace is seen getting in a lift with a different woman, who was dressed in a white jumpsuit, at his team’s Vancouver hotel.
The photographs led to a source telling The Sun that Rooney’s wife Coleen had ‘read him the riot act’ – and she was later spotted without her wedding ring while shopping near their home in Cheshire.
She reportedly removed it after demanding the former England striker go to rehab to stop drinking.
Reports surfaced recently that the father-of-four vowed to go teetotal and have counselling to help him stay dry in a bid to save his marriage, but it appears he broke this promise during the celebrations last Sunday.
The Manchester United record goal scorer has been involved in a string of controversies involving alcohol, including an arrest for public intoxication at Dulles International airport in Washington DC last year.
Reports surfaced recently that father-of-four vowed to go teetotal and have counselling to help him stay dry in a bid to save his marriage. He’s been with Coleen (pictured together in July) since they were teenagers, and they’ve been married 10 years
His move back to England has also been irked with controversy, and the club has been urged to consider abandoning its sponsorship tie-up between Rooney and the online casino 32Red.
Sports minister Nigel Adams said putting the striker in the number 32 shirt in order to promote the Gibraltar-based betting company was a ‘very crafty move’.
His image was used alongside ’32’-branded posts on social media, and he will work with the casino on ‘community initiatives’ as part of the deal.
The club has refused to backtrack after being criticised by the Church of England, MPs and one of the NHS’s top psychologists.
Being caught partying was the latest in a long list of drinking incidents for the former Manchester United and Everton striker.
These included a court appearance for drink driving in 2017, when he drove party girl Laura Simpson, 30, in her VW Beetle in Cheshire while three times over the limit.
Rooney is moving back to England to join Derby County, where he will wear this controversial shirt advertising a betting firm
He was handed a two-year driving ban and 100 hours of unpaid community work, apologising for an ‘unforgivable lack of judgement’.
Coleen, then pregnant, and their other three sons, Kai, Klay and Kit, were on holiday in Spain at the time.
In December he was taken into custody at Washington’s Dulles airport, saying he was left ‘disorientated’ by prescribed sleeping tablets he took on a flight while drinking.
He received a statutory automatic fine and was released shortly afterwards at the airport, a spokesman for Rooney said.
In 2016 he was at the centre of another drinking row at a wedding reception between England games, later apologising ‘unreservedly’ for his behaviour.
It was reported in April 2017 that he had been seen drinking at least five pints of Stella at a Cheshire pub on a night out.