Dressed only in tight-fitting football shirts or skimpy bikinis, and pouting enthusiastically for lucrative sportswear and magazine photoshoots, the World Cup WAGs are on the march.
Staples of the tabloid press and countless internet sites, footballers wives and girlfriends have created an entire soccer sub-culture and a lucrative media sideline. With the 2010 World Cup in South Africa just around the corner, the likes of Sarah Brandner, girlfriend of German midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger, and Abbi Clancy, partner of England striker Peter Crouch, have led the rush to the photo shoots.
It’s a long way from 1966, the year of England’s only World Cup triumph when wives and girlfriends were not even invited to the team’s celebration dinner.
Back then, a footballer’s partner was expected to be demure and discreet, living their lives in suburban anonymity rather than double-page spreads or in reality TV shows.
Tina Moore, the wife of England Cup-winning skipper Bobby, recalled how the two had met. “I met Bobby when I was 16 and knew nothing about football. The first date he ever asked me on I stood him up,” she said.
“It was only when I bumped into him while shopping with my mother on our local High Street that things went any further. I told her that he’d asked me out and she decided he looked nice and invited him round for tea,” Tina went on to add.
The Moores preferred quiet nights in rather than falling out of dance clubs into a battery of waiting cameras.