Dubai: Celebrities like to keep their travel plans under wraps, so it's not surprising that Manchester United football star Wayne Rooney was spotted at the iconic Burj Al Arab in Jumeirah yesterday.
Just days after clinching a record-breaking deal with the Red Devils which will see him earning a staggering £160,000-a-week (Dh921,987) salary, Rooney and his wife Coleen boarded an Emirates flight bound for a five-day holiday in sunny Dubai.
The Rooneys join the likes of sporting celebrities like Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Andre Agassi who have used the ultra-luxury ‘seven star' hotel, the fourth tallest in the world, as a getaway from the prying Western paparazzi.
The timing of his Dubai sojourn makes for interesting reading as Rooney was scheduled to celebrate his 25th birthday with over 100 friends and family at a lavish party at his £3 million Cheshire mansion yesterday.
Last minute booking
Instead, the high-profile Premier League player has opted for a relaxing and quiet retreat at the seaside hotel. English tabloids put the cost of Rooney's five-day UAE holiday at over £10,000. The couple were spirited into Manchester airport after a cloak-and-dagger operation in which their private seats on board the A320 flight were booked at the last minute.
The trip comes after a roller-coaster week in England in which Rooney came close to leaving his Old Trafford club citing a lack of sporting ambition as the main reason.
However, on Friday Manchester United announced that Rooney had signed a new £65 million five-year deal that made him the highest-paid English footballer in history,
Rooney, who is currently injured, had taken the consent of Man United supremo Sir Alex Ferguson to make the Dubai trip and the manager reportedly gave him his full backing. He recently took Coleen on a ‘second honeymoon' to Prague in an effort to patch up his marriage in the wake of allegations that he cheated with a prostitute Jenny Thompson.
