FanHouse WayneRooney

There are times when the marketing aces at the Barclay's Premier League home office must get a little tired of constantly telling anyone who will listen that the league is the greatest in the world. Surely partisans in Barcelona and Madrid would argue otherwise.

However smug these assertions might come off, the Premier League did get another amazing game to add to its resume and worldwide popularity in the form of Manchester United's last-minute 4-3 derby victory over Manchester City at Old Trafford. As far as a 90-minute soccer game goes, it's hard to ask for more than anything than this match because it had pretty much everything.

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It's probably not going to make up for losing the 2008 Champions League final in rainy Moscow, but Chelsea got a modicum of revenge against Manchester United Sunday by defeating the reigning Premier League champions 4-1 in a penalty shootout after a thrilling 2-2 draw after 90 high-octane minutes at London's Wembley Stadium.

The traditional curtain-raiser for the English season featured a little bit of everything, with the two world powers trading blows and giving each other everything they could handle. The game probably had a little more juice than other Community Shield matches due to the longstanding rivalry between the clubs.

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)

With Leather provides this YouTube clip of Manchester United's Paul Scholes getting sent off after trying to nail Liverpool's Xabi Alonso with a roundhouse right. Scholes missed -- maybe he can take notes from this guy -- but he's still been suspended three League matches.

Not the worst thing in the world, but Wayne Rooney also suffered a knee injury during the match and his status is in doubt for the Man U's Champions League tilt against French side Lille this Wednesday.

I think I know why England didn't make it out of the quarterfinals last summer in Germany:

Somehow I don't see Wayne Rooney finding the humor in this. Call it a hunch. On the other hand, I'm guessing Peter Crouch was thrilled with Stephen Merchant's portrayal ... right down to the robot.

The best part, though, was Ian Wright's unscripted comments at the end: "I don't know what it is about little people like that ... I just love 'em, man. I love 'em." Yeah, Wayne Rooney's definitely not laughing.