Updated June 28, 2021 at 5:27 p.m.
- Not only the football professionals, but also their friends and wives are in the spotlight at major tournaments such as European and World Cups.
- Famous and notorious are the WAGs, the “Wives and Girlfriends” of the English national team, who made a big splash, especially at the 2006 World Cup.
- Victoria Beckham took the status of the player woman to a new level. The current generation of English WAGs is clearly in their shadow ahead of the game against Germany on Tuesday.
England is considered the motherland of football. The foundations of the world’s most popular sport were created there. Professional football was already being played on the island when in most other countries there was still a bit of casual football in the park.
So it fits very well that the English were pioneers in other areas of the development of football. Or rather, pioneers. Because it was the girlfriends and wives of the players of the English national team who gave the status “Player woman“ raised to a new level and professionalized.
This development began around the turn of the millennium and reached its peak during the 2006 World Cup in Germany. On the field of play was the oft-invoked golden generation of the “Three Lions“, who was accompanied to the tournament by a no less extraordinary collection of female companions.
Coleen Rooney, Cheryl Cole, Peter Crouch’s friend Abby Clancy, Steven Gerrard’s friend Alex Curran and Frank Lampard’s friend Elen Rivas had such a crash in Baden-Baden, where the English team stayed, that English sports reporters reported about “hooligans with credit cards” in sent home.
Victoria Beckham took the term gamer woman to a new level
To this day it is not entirely clear whether the “Sunday Telegraph” or the “Mail on Sunday” used the term “WAGs” for the first time. But the abbreviation for “Wives and Girlfriends” became popular around the world in 2006 and has also been adopted in other languages.
The WAGs of the “Three Lions” could be recognized by their sunglasses that were way too big, skirts that were way too short and handbags that were way too expensive. On their extensive shopping trips, at their champagne parties in the hotel bar and of course on the VIP grandstand in the stadium, they were extremely popular motifs for paparazzi and the gossip press.
When England failed to Portugal in the quarter-finals of the World Cup (on penalties, of course), the players’ women were blamed. Defender Rio Ferdinand later said he felt like he was in a circus performance throughout the tournament.
The legendary “WAG-Class of 2006” was of course led by Victoria Beckham, who can justifiably be called the mother of all modern women players. On July 4, 1999, the Spice Girl married her David and thus created the basis for the professional profile of the gamer woman, which is still valid today.
Victoria was extremely successful as a pop star herself, but when her solo career didn’t really get going after the Spice Girls split up, it was her relationship with the footballer that kept her relevant in conversation and in public.
Victoria Beckham increased David’s market value
At the same time, she gave David Beckham the glamor that gave him a far higher market value than his mere footballing skills could ever have done. To this day, the Beckhams run an exceptionally successful family business that revolves primarily around themselves and their own celebrity.
The children also benefit from this, the eldest son Brooklyn Beckham is followed by 12.4 million people on Instagram. And not primarily because he is such a successful male model and photographer, but because he is the son of the Beckhams.
Of course, Victoria Beckham did not reinvent the wheel, players’ women have always been the focus of sports and tabloid reporting, as a look at Germany shows. There have already been reports about Fritz Walter’s wife Italia again and again, Bernd Schuster’s wife Gaby, like Bodo Illgner’s wife Bianca, was a tough and headline-grabbing manager of her husband. In the 90s, Lothar Matthäus’ second wife Lolita Morena caused a lot of stir in Munich’s chiceria and all of Germany.
Social media fuel the fame of the player women
However, it has been a development over the past 20 years that the relationship status “player woman” offers the chance to build one’s own career alongside the kicking men. What the English player women started at the turn of the millennium has been extremely fueled by social media in recent years.
A prominent example of this is Cathy Hummels, who was initially only known for her relationship with Mats Hummels, but is now a successful influencer with almost 600,000 followers on Instagram and appeared both as a presenter and as a candidate in various TV formats.
While professional footballers are rated according to goals, duels won or pass rates, the follower numbers on Instagram for player women provide information about who is particularly good at the business. The current generation of the English WAGs, whose men will meet Germany in the second round of the European Championship on Tuesday (kick-off at 6 p.m.), is deeply in the shadow of the players’ women from 2006 in this regard.
The current generation of WAGs causes little stir
Kate Kane, the wife of Captain Harry Kane, has 162,000 followers, Megan Davison, the girlfriend of goalkeeper Jordan Pickford just under 54,000, Harry Maguire’s companion Fern Hawkins has 48,000 followers. One looks in vain for the glamor and extravagance of their predecessors in the current women players of the “Three Lions”.
Victoria Beckham, who is doing well as a designer in Los Angeles, still serves as a role model. The ex-pop singer lets 29 million people participate in her life on Instagram, even at the age of 47, Beckham, who shaped the image of the modern gamer woman like no other, easily puts her successors as WAGs of the “Three Lions” in his pocket.
Sources used:
- mirror.co.uk: Remember the WAGs from World Cup 2006? Here’s how their lives have changed over the last decade
- theguardian.com: Wags made us a circus, says Rio
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