WAGS are back – and better than ever

In 2006, the then-England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson unwittingly made a decision that would change pop culture forever. His team was preparing for the World Cup in Germany and the players would soon be shipped off to the German town of Baden Baden when Eriksson decided the wives and girlfriends of the players would be allowed to travel with them. 

The sleepy town of Baden Baden was transformed into a paparazzi dream scene for three weeks (until England was knocked out by Portugal), with the wives and girlfriends of the players living it up whilst their other halves focussed on the football. Those few weeks in 2006 brought us photos of Victoria Beckham and Cheryl Cole donned in patriotic tops and oversized sunglasses, which still circulate on social media sixteen years later. 

Paparazzi, initially there to capture the footballers in between matches and training sessions, found themselves enamoured with this gaggle of party girls, and the wives and girlfriends didn’t seem to mind the cameras either. Cheryl Cole, Abbey Clancy, Coleen Rooney and Alex Gerrard were the leaders of the pack, and the trip catapulted them into a level of fame rivalling their footballer partners. 

The potential for photos to sell back to the tabloids at home was endless, and the term WAG began to appear in headlines everywhere. The origin of the term (meaning Wives and/or Girlfriends) is disputed; some say it was a paparazzi sending photos back to his paper who first labelled the group WAGS, others say it was slang invented by the staff at the Jumeirah Beach Club in Dubai. 

Either way, WAG entered the British lexicon and it hasn’t left since. The outfits, affairs, partying, weddings and waistlines of these women were recorded in tabloids with acute attention to detail — and the public couldn’t get enough of them. Even Cheryl Cole and Victoria Beckham, who both had achieved fame in their own right as pop stars, found themselves propelled beyond the realm of celebrity and into something much more gossipy. 

In the years that followed, the term WAG has often been contended, sometimes by the women themselves and sometimes by the public. After all, diminishing each woman into the umbrella category of wife and/or girlfriend suggests that their greatest achievement is merely the man they happen to be married to, and the grip they have had on British tabloids tells you that there must be something more at play. 

WAGS were influencers pre-influencer era, they offered access into their lives and maintained a level of relatability, despite leading lives of extreme luxury. They knew how to work the cameras, how to get good coverage and more often than not launched successful careers or businesses off the back of their fame (Colleen Rooney’s workout DVDs were bestsellers and she has written columns for Closer and OK!, Abbey Clancy is a successful broadcaster, Alex Gerrard launched a perfume).

But whilst the tabloids fell for the WAGS, their distracting antics in Baden Baden were blamed by some for England’s defeat in 2006. At the next World Cup in 2009, manager Fabio Capello essentially banned the WAGS from travelling with their partners saying, “We are there to play, not for a holiday. The players will have one day with their family. It will be one day a week, after each game and that is enough.”

Capello might have been able to keep the WAGS away from the tournaments but he couldn’t keep them out of the headlines and their antics became a mainstay of British culture in the 2000s. In more recent years, however, as the OG WAGS grew older and focused on their families, WAG culture began to slowly fade from popular culture. Social media took over and influencers were invented. 

That was, of course, until Coleen Rooney donned her best detective gear and outed Rebekah Vardy as the alleged snake amongst her Instagram followers, who has been selling stories to the tabloids based on fake Instagram stories Rooney posted as a trap. Rooney then went full-exposé, revealing her detective work across social media and sending a humiliated Vardy straight to her lawyers. 

As a result, we have the Wagatha Christie libel trial, the gift that keeps on giving. From Wayne Rooney having to reveal his secret Instagram account “@Wazzaroon08”, to Vardy alleging that her phone containing essential evidence had been accidentally dropped in the ocean, the trial is rivalling Netflix for quality entertainment. 

The sudden prevalence of WAGS in the news has a sense of nostalgia about it — a return to the blonde highlights and oversized sunglasses of the early 2000s and an escape from today’s tiresome headlines that all seem to end in “-gate”. Vardy and Rooney have unintentionally reawoken the culture and reminded us what was so great about these ridiculously brilliant women in the first place. WAGS are back just in time for the 2022 World Cup, and they might just be better than ever.