WAGs - Antecedents

Antecedents

Interest in the partners of footballers dates back at least to the late 1950s when the long-serving England captain Billy Wright married the singer Joy Beverley. By the late 1960s, then-captain Bobby Moore (1941–93) and his first wife Tina had become regarded as a stylish and "golden" couple. During the 1970 World Cup in Mexico the England manager Sir Alf Ramsey (1920–99) expressed concern at the effects on the team's cohesion of the presence of the wives of four players, a view that seems to have been shared by some other members of the squad. England's quarter-final defeat by West Germany in that competition has been widely attributed to goalkeeping lapses by Peter Bonetti, whose pre-match nerves were thought by many, including Ramsey himself, to have been accentuated by rumours circulating about the alleged behaviour of his wife Frances. By contrast, during the 1966 World Cup, their wives drove themselves to Wembley and the FA booked them a single function room in the Royal Garden Hotel at Kensington.

Interest in such partnerships scaled new heights in the late 1990s and early 21st century with the marriage (in 1999) of David Beckham to singer Victoria Adams ("Posh Spice") of the Spice Girls. The couple were widely known as "Posh and Becks" and every aspect of their relationship and nuance of dress were subjected to scrutiny in the press and other media. Victoria Beckham was quoted as saying that she and her husband had "so many wider interests ... fashion, make-up. I mean you think, yeah, football's great, and singing's great. But you've got to look at the bigger picture".

Former Manchester United captain Roy Keane had lashed out at footballers' wives and girlfriends, as well as their lavish lifestyle, during their trophyless season in 2001–2002. Keane blamed United's loss of form on some of his team-mates' fixation with wealth, claiming that they had "forgot about the game, lost the hunger that got you the Rolex, the cars, the mansion." Earlier in the season, Keane had publicly advocated the break-up of the Treble-winning team as he believed the team-mates who had played in United's victorious 1999 Champions League final no longer had the motivation to work as hard. When Keane became manager of Sunderland A.F.C, he complained about the difficulty signing players to the city in northeast England, as their wives or girlfriends insisted they only move to teams based in London. He remarked "If someone doesn't want to come to Sunderland then all well and good," Keane said. "But if they don't want to come to Sunderland because their wife wants to go shopping in London, then it is a sad state of affairs. Unfortunately that is what is influencing a lot of footballers' decisions. Priorities have changed for footballers and they are being dictated to by their wives and girlfriends."