England’s WAGs had us captivated at the 2006 World Cup – here’s why-Kimberley Bond and Rebecca Sayce-Entertainment – Metro

The 2006 WAGs had us in a chokehold (Pictures: Getty Images)

Euro 2024 is heading to Germany, the home of the iconic 2006 Fifa World Cup and the chaotic cast of Wags who captured our attention.

It wasn’t even that long ago, but with the world so dramatically different – this was a time before Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy’s Wagatha Christie spat, after all.

David Beckham, with a heavily gelled blonde mop, was captain of England’s team. The fans’ hopes were firmly pinned on Goldenballs being the one to bring football home from Germany.

Meanwhile, a fresh-faced Wayne Rooney was the team’s wonder kid, establishing himself as a star goal scorer at Man United. Then there was Ashley Cole, touted as one of the best defenders of his generation, caught in a bitter battle between his current team Arsenal, while being wooed to join Chelsea for substantially higher wages.

While the players were making headlines on the back pages of the newspapers for their antics on the pitch, it was their wives and girlfriends, the ‘Wags’, making the front page while out representing the nation in Baden-Baden.

The eclectic collective of women were keen to enjoy their time out in the relatively quiet German town to the very max, and with Victoria ‘Posh Spice’ Beckham sitting pretty at the top of the Wag hierarchy, they were easy to spot in the wild.

Victoria Beckham was at the top of the ‘Wag hierarchy’ with everyone knowing every single detail of her life(Picture: Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)

Coleen Rooney embodied a real ‘rags to riches’ story for many (Picture: C. Uncle/FilmMagic)

The Wags brought some wild tabloid moments to the 2006 World Cup (Picture: Richard Sellers/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images)

Tending to roam together in a pack, the Wags all sported the same look; perma-tanned, with glossy long locks boasting honey and caramel chunky highlights and thickened by luscious hair extensions. Their faces were often obscured by saucer-esque sunglasses and baker boy caps, with large designer bags balancing on their wrists.

Their Brits-abroad antics made for delectable tabloid fodder – from all-night parties (involving Abbey Clancy table dancing) to spending sprees amounting to tens of thousands of pounds (something Coleen amazingly described as ‘picking up a few bits’), they quickly established themselves as the darlings of Fleet Street.

Red top papers flexed their financial heft at the height of their power, willing to fork out six figures for salacious photosets and juicy interviews. Urban legend has it they even earned their new moniker from a pithy tabloid reporter, with the word immediately entering our daily lexicon.

While the 2006 World Cup in Germany may have been what catapulted the wives and girlfriends of footballers into the spotlight and the glare of camera flashes, the rise of Wag culture had its roots laid back as early as the nineties.

Sam Carlisle, a former red top reporter who now runs her own PR company, attributes the £304million cash injection the revamped Premier League got when Sky bought the rights in 1992, to the moneyed culture around football.

‘The wealth from the TV rights really trickled down to the players,’ she explains to Metro.co.uk. ‘There were suddenly these quite young men earning massive salaries, and they were now some of the most eligible bachelors in the country.’

Their lifestyle was characterised by looking glamorous and going out partying regularly (Picture: C. Uncle/FilmMagic)

The non-stop party lifestyle for the Wags never seemed to end (Picture: Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)

Their jet-setting lifestyles are aspirational to many (Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

These nouveau riche footballers spent lavishly; boasting luxury penthouses, fleets of supercars and wardrobes stacked with designer clothes.

‘But they were going out to local bars and clubs, which made them seem quite accessible to ordinary women,’ Sam continued.

The early noughties were a time when clubbing thrived; following in the footsteps of the Cool Britannia era that preceded it, the British economy was strong, income was more disposable, and people were generally more carefree and willing to hit the bars at the weekend.

Labour passed licencing laws that welcomed the advent of 24-hour drinking in 2005 which also likely contributed to this culture that was prevalent at the time.

‘Wags were effectively the little sisters of the ladettes that came before them,’ Sam continues. ‘They were the next incarnation of women going out partying, having access to money and being quite shameless about what they were doing.’

What also made them such a tabloid draw was the simple fact that Wags made for a good story. While Victoria Beckham and Cheryl were literal pop stars, many of the other Wags were simply ordinary women naively entering a plush and glitzy showbiz world.

Coleen Rooney was adored by many thanks to her relatability (Picture: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)

Coleen was still a schoolgirl when Rooney shot to fame (Picture: John Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)

Coleen Rooney was popular with the papers, thanks to her incredible story and rise to fame from humble beginnings (Picture: ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images)

‘For many of the Wags, there was a fairytale narrative, but it was Coleen who really embodied this rags to riches tale,’ Sam explains. ‘She entered the scene as a schoolgirl from a working-class family in Liverpool.

‘She was thrust into the spotlight, but she didn’t just trade off Wayne’s fame, she hustled to make her money with her “girl next door” image. She had her own TV shows, exercise videos, and columns in glossy mags. She was paid £3 million to front the George from Asda series.

‘And why not? Good on her. She got a fairytale ending – albeit a very modern fairytale. This was a big misconception about many Wags, that they just lived off their husband’s money, but a lot of them had their own professions and bought in their own income.’

For many, this often meant their relationship with the press was symbiotic. Sam laughingly recalls hearing about the hotel the Wags were staying in at Baden Baden choosing to put up screens so they could sunbathe in private – only to be forced to take them down when they complained that paps couldn’t get pictures of them.

‘In these early days, Wags didn’t have the PR control that celebrities have now,’ she explains. ‘There was a naivety to them. There wasn’t this structure around them to put their story out in a certain way. They were going out, getting drunk and just having a good time. Life was one big, glamorous party.’

It was something we certainly wanted to buy into. A 2008 survey from a teen magazine saw more girls wanted to be Wags than politicians, while a tongue-in-cheek directional book WAG Don’t ­Wannabe: How to Date Footballers – and Survive! was released for all aspiring hopefuls.

It’s little surprise the Wag lifestyle appealed to teens – it was filled with glitz, glamour and parties (Picture: Fred Duval/FilmMagic)

The every movement of Wags was documented by paps, willing to snap their every move(Picture: Marc Piasecki/FilmMagic)

Designer fashion and handbags were as much Wag staples as the footballers on their arm (Picture: Dave Hogan/Getty Images)

‘Wag was a byword for celebrity,’ pop culture expert Nick Ede explains. ‘So many young girls wanted in on that lifestyle as it was seen as ultra glam and aspirational – living in a huge house and being super stylish. It’s not too different to how some young people may see Love Island now.’

However, this glitzy, technicoloured world stands in stark contrast to today, as the cultural landscape has since changed beyond recognition.

Amid the cost of living crisis with rising energy bills, mortgage rates and food prices, many people no longer have such spending power. Clubs and pubs across the country have been forced to close their doors, and for many, endless partying is simply impossible.

Meanwhile, the world of celebrity has been entirely revolutionised by social media. Paps can very rarely demand big money, as celebrities can choose to communicate directly with fans through Instagram and X, among other apps. Statements are carefully worded, and photos are immaculately airbrushed.

It’s through these apps that women can now make their millions without ever having needed their profiles boosted by famous footballers.

‘The ostentatious high extremes of the noughties are gone,’ Nick explains. ‘There has been a massive shift and that culture of being famous thanks to your footballer boyfriend is long dead.’

The public’s attitude toward celebrity culture has drastically changed (Picture: Giuseppe Cacace/Getty Images)

Wags are no longer constantly on newspaper front pages (Picture: Simon James/WireImage)

We also can’t pretend the press coverage during halcyon days Wags was always fawning and fair.

Wags were often spoken about disparagingly and ogled as window dressing while the footballers were heaped with praise if the team were doing well.

However, they were often scapegoated should things go wrong. When England was spectacularly booted out of the quarter-finals by Portugal in 2006, the Wags were inexplicably blamed, dubbed as a ‘distraction’ just for merely daring to exist.

‘Of course, it was a hugely misogynistic time,’ Martin Conboy, Professor of Journalism at the University of Sheffield, explains. ‘Women were framed as appendages to their male counterparts.

‘It’s little surprise that the culture around the England football team now is more sedate – why would anyone want to be open to such intense media scrutiny?

‘There was a time when pretty much everyone could name England’s first team because of their celebrity status and, in some cases, infamy. Now, their images are much more tightly controlled.’

When England were losing, the Wags were blamed for ‘distracting’ the other players (Picture: ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images)

With the Wags about, a large media circus followed – with paps being able to sell pictures for huge sums (Picture: Chris Uncle/FilmMagic)

But the relationship between the press and Wags wasn’t always one-way (Picture: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

It’s certainly true there’s less publicly known scandal surrounding the England team: while cheating allegations and kiss-and-tell stories were peppered throughout Rooney’s footballing career (as with several other footballers), the current team have mostly kept themselves squeaky clean.

Captain Harry Kane is best known for goal-scoring rather than bed-hopping, while Marcus Rashford established himself as a national treasure for his extensive campaigning.

More generally speaking, lazily tarring all footballer’s partners with the ‘Wag’ brush seems a little redundant.

In some cases, the fame and earning power of some ‘Wags’, such as Little Mix’s Perrie Edwards far surpasses that of their significant other, Liverpool’s Alex Oxlade Chamberlain.

Others just choose to bow out of that scene altogether – Georgina Irwin, the fiancée of Aaron Ramsdale, still continues to work as a flight attendant. Meanwhile, Paige Milian, the fiancée of Raheem Stirling, keeps a low profile helping to run Stirling’s property company.

Perrie Edwards would not be described as a ‘Wag’, despite her footballing boyfriend (Picture: TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)

Harry Kane is better known for his football than his family life (Picture: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

With these numerous contributing factors, it’s unlikely we’re going to see the same debauched behaviour from Baden-Baden replicated in the ultra-conservative Qatar – but that’s not to say we’re over our guilty obsession with Wag culture.

Having mostly kept out of the spotlight in more recent years, Coleen Rooney’s decision to turn detective in 2019 and accuse someone with access to Rebekah Vardy’s Instagram account of leaking stories to a tabloid prompted universal public interest (Vardy has denied she was responsible). With the media dubbing the saga ‘Wagatha Christie.’

Things got juicier when Rebekah sued Coleen for libel, and the court case provided a fascinating insight into a world most people aren’t privy to.

‘It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment where interest around pop culture, tabloids and selling stories collided,’ Nick explains. ‘Most of us have literally seen Coleen grow up, and Rebekah has made a name for herself on numerous reality shows.

‘It also just highlighted this ridiculous world of Wags and what they get up to.’

The ‘Wagatha Christie’ trial, between Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy. fascinated the nation (Picture: Karwai Tang/WireImage)

Rebekah Vardy lost her widely-publicised libel case against Coleen (Picture: Karwai Tang/WireImage)

‘It was absolutely fascinating,’ Sam agrees. ‘People are always drawn to what rich celebrities do, and this was an absolute circus. It’s a world we wanted a mirror into.

‘That whole story opened a door to that world which had firmly been kept shut. Now, we could view things with great detail, and there’s part of our psyche who are fascinated by people who have loads of money and still make terrible decisions.’

However, the heyday of Wags as we saw in the noughties is well and truly over.

The year 2006 was the culmination of a perfect storm of factors, which cultivated an iconic era that we’re all still obsessed with – albeit slightly shame-facedly – nearly two decades later.

‘It was the real age of excess,’ Sam explains. ‘It was the roaring twenties of its time before everything crashed. There were numerous moral implications for that, but for so many people, it was a giddy, excitable time where anything goes.’

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