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Plenty of professional athletes use the money at their disposal to party in their spare time, but Manchester United forward Marcus Rashford was forced to fork over a big chunk of cash for allegedly missing practice following a long day (and night) of drinking.
There are plenty of fairly legendary stories about athletes dropping an absurd amount of money on alcohol during a night out on the town, although most of them involve people who earned the right to celebrate after taking home a championship.
There’s also no shortage of players who don’t think twice about letting loose on a regular basis over the course of a season, but teams obviously have some incentive to do what they can to keep them on a fairly short leash (unless you’re Dennis Rodman, who got the green light to blow off some steam in Las Vegas in between games during the 1998 NBA Finals).
However, there’s only so much the powers that be can do to ensure their most valuable assets make wise decisions, and Manchester United learned that lesson the hard way thanks to what transpired ahead of its FA Cup showdown with Newport County on Sunday.
Marcus Rashford has appeared in more than 250 matches since making his debut with the club in 2015, but the 26-year-old forward was nowhere to be found when his squad earned the right to advance to the fifth round of the aforementioned tournament with a 4-2 win over the weekend.
On Monday, Man U announced it had hit Rashford with a £650,000 ($825,000) fine for what was described as an “internal disciplinary matter,” and the British tabloids wasted no time doing what they do best: finding someone willing to provide them with the dirty details.
According to The Sun, a waitress who said she linked up with Rashford when he made the trek to Belfast last Thursday was more than happy to discuss the “12-hour tequila bender” she said kicked off after he arrived in Northern Ireland via private jet before patronizing a number of drinking establishments in the city during his visit (which stemmed from a friend of his signing a contract with a local team).
The woman said she witnessed the soccer star and his entourage subsisting on a steady diet of cocktails, Patron, and at least one round of limoncello shots while pursuing his alleged “mission to get drunk” at the various venues they hit up before he supposedly collapsed in his bed at his hotel around 3 A.M. while still wearing the clothes he went out in.
Rashford was able to wake up a few hours later to catch the private flight that brought him back to Manchester, but was apparently in no condition to participate in training with his team.
It presumably didn’t take long for the club to discover why that was the case, and he’ll be forced to forfeit two weeks of wages as a result (he resumed practice on Monday and will presumably be making his grand return for the team’s showdown with Wolverhampton on Thursday).