It was the tournament that knocked the footballer’s wives cliché into a cocked hat and birthed the ‘WAG’ – the wives and girlfriends of the England players at the 2006 World Cup in Germany were big news.
Gary Neville and Coleen Rooney, who was in Baden-Baden while her partner, Wayne, led England’s progress under Sven-Goran Eriksson, discussed the ensuing media maelstrom, on the Stick to Football podcast, brought to you by Sky Bet.
“I was f*cking fuming,” said Neville, England’s right-back at the World Cup. “Not necessarily individually or even with the wives, actually. I was fuming with the organisers.”
The media focus on England’s WAGs was a distraction in Germany
“We were in Baden-Baden, in this camp in Germany for the 2006 World Cup – it was the biggest competition of our lives, and we had a good team. I can only describe it [the experience] as an absolute circus.
“It wasn’t with the wives [that I was annoyed] but the whole organisation of the trip. The families and wives were all at this other hotel.”
Wayne Rooney was at his first World Cup and his partner, Coleen, was staying at the hotel with the families of other players as well as the rump of the English sports press.
“There was lots of press in the hotel,” she told Stick to Football. “All the sports writers were there. And the place was tiny. There were only a handful of places to go out, eat and drink.
“We couldn’t stay in a hotel all day. We had to go out and get food and enjoy ourselves, but because the press were on top of us; they exaggerated things and made out that we were having these parties every night. We weren’t. The sports writers were ten times worse than us; they were out all the time.”
Reporting on the players’ families became a theme of the World Cup as England picked up seven points against Paraguay, Trinidad & Tobago and Sweden to top Group B and set up a Second Round win over Ecuador and subsequent quarter-final exit on penalties against Portugal, in which Rooney was sent off.
“My wife was there [in the hotel] so it wasn’t a case of looking at any individual thinking they’ve done wrong,” clarified Neville, a pundit and co-commentator on Sky Sports.
“It was just a whole circus of the sports writers, journalists, and families and wives all being in the same hotel. There were stories breaking every day.
“When the players went to their press conferences, they were being asked about it all the time, so I just thought it was a nonsense in the midst of a World Cup.”
