It was this tournament that put stereotypes about footballers’ wives to the wind and gave birth to the ‘WAG’ – the wives and girlfriends of English players at the 2006 World Cup in Germany were big news.
Gary Neville AND Coleen Rooneywho was in Baden-Baden while her partner Wayne guided England’s progress under Sven-Goran Eriksson, discussed the resulting media frenzy on the Stick to Football podcast, brought to you by Heaven Plant.
“I got pissed off,” said Neville, England’s right-back at the World Cup. – Actually, not necessarily individually, or even with their wives. I was furious with the organizers.
“We were in Baden-Baden, camping in Germany during 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 entire organization of the trip. All the families and wives were in this other hotel.
Wayne Rooney was at his first World Cup and his partner Coleen was staying in a hotel with other players’ families and members of the English sports press.
“There was a lot of press in the hotel,” she told Stick to Football. “All the sports journalists were there. And the place was tiny. There were only a few places to go out, eat and drink.
“We couldn’t spend the whole day in the hotel. We had to go out, eat and have fun, but because the press was all over us; they were exaggerating and saying we were having these parties every night. We weren’t. Sportswriters were ten times worse than us; They were absent all the time.”
Reports about players’ families became the talk of the World Cup when England scored seven points against Paraguay, Trinidad and Tobago and Sweden to top Group B and secure a second-round victory over Ecuador before exiting the quarter-finals on penalties against Portugal, in which Rooney was sent off.
“My wife was there [in the hotel] so it wasn’t about looking at a person and thinking they did something wrong,” Neville explained. expert and co-commentator on Heavenly sports.
“It was just a whole circus of sportswriters, journalists, families and wives staying in the same hotel. New stories appeared every day.
“When the players went to press conferences they were asked about it all the time, so I thought it was nonsense in the middle of the World Cup.”
