Footballers’ wives
How WAGS became a modern sensation
The crowds at Wembley on July 30 1966 would have taken no notice of the small group of women who had arrived anonymously on a coach or hitched a lift to London to watch their husbands play a rather important game of football. The TV cameras weren’t interested in what they were wearing, and there was no VIP treatment laid on – even after their boys had etched themselves into the history books by beating West Germany 4-2. Instead, while the players enjoyed a victory banquet at their Kensington hotel, their wives were ushered to a nearby burger bar.
It was a vastly different time (a time, for one thing, when football really was coming home) and for the wives and girlfriends of the England football squad, life was not one long, glamorous party, filled with designer shopping trips and helicopter rides. For most of the wives, life after 1966 remained much the same. “You were invisible beings – just there in the background to give support,” Daphne Cohen, wife of George, who went on to work as a property developer, once said. “After the meal, George and I met friends for a drink, and then we drove home to our family.”
Not quite the lavish party lifestyle footballers would go on to be known for. And yet, there had been a shift in the way people saw the beautiful game: the players weren’t quite “one of us” anymore, they were special, and they – and their families – were becoming more interesting to the general public than ever before.
For one woman in particular life was about to change dramatically. Tina and Bobby Moore became football’s first celebrity couple after he captained England to World Cup glory. Bobby got a modelling contract, and designers began to give Tina clothes. The Beckhams of their era, they drove a Jaguar, went to parties with Tom Jones and Joan Collins, and lived in a mansion in Essex complete with a sweeping staircase. “I suppose we may have started the trend for a flashy ‘footballers’ wives’ lifestyle in a way,” she conceded following their highprofile divorce.
These glimmers of gossip and glamour were nothing, though, compared to what it would one day mean to be a wife or girlfriend of an England player. Twelve years ago, in the sleepy German town of Baden-baden, a cultural phenomenon unleashed itself on an unsuspecting world: it was the birth of what would become known as the WAG, and for many, football would never be the same again.
They dressed like they were on a hen-do in Marbella, shopped for England, drank for England, partied for England… some felt they also did for England. The class of 2006, including Nancy Dell’olio, Coleen Mcloughlin, Cheryl Tweedy and their queen, Posh Spice herself, were as talked-about as their other halves that summer.
It wasn’t the players who were blamed for England’s poor performance in Germany, it was their WAGS, deemed publicity-hungry witches whose barely-there shorts and monogrammed Louis Vuitton handbags five times the width of their bodies had distracted the lads from scoring. Yet, while the squad was sent home with their tails between their legs, the girls made their names.
Fashion has changed a fair bit from 1966 to 2018, but WAGS have always had a “look”. In 1966, you could have one of two haircuts ( just above the ear, or just below the ear, cropped fringe, and a touch of bouffant on top), the choice between a dress and cardi or a skirt suit, and if the iconic photo from World Cup final day is anything to go by, at least three of them seem to be wearing the same shoes.
The Baden-baden babes, too, had a uniform – long, glossy waves, oversized handbags, Juicy Couture tracksuits and towering heels. Teenage girls up and