WAGs – Love Them Or Hate Them?

WAGs are a new phenomenon in football. You wouldn’t have heard of the word 10 years ago, but they shot to fame in the 2006 World Cup. Sven Goran Ericsson infamously allowed the wives and girlfriends (nicknamed WAGs by the media) to come along, and many blamed England’s poor performance on this distraction. In general, football fans absolutely hate them and what they stand for, i.e. walking around spending their husband’s cash all week. However, there is the other side to this: many of them are extremely good looking, and go on to have very successful modelling careers and appearing in magazines such as ‘Nuts’ and ‘Zoo’, of which many of the readers are football fans.

So when it comes to WAGs, you probably love them when they are taking their clothes off and hate them the rest of the time. Some of the more famous WAGs are Danielle Lloyd, who was Teddy Sheringhams girlfriend, and who appeared on Celebrity Big Brother; Cheryl Cole, one of the X-Factor judges as well as Girls Aloud member; and Colleen McLaughlin, Wayne Rooney’s wife. She is perhaps the most well-known, as she is always on the TV and in magazines.

WAGs seem to appeal to women more than men, and generally women who have absolutely no interest in football prefer the celebrity culture, and the WAGs fit into that. Many people basically see them as gold diggers, because they will go out with one footballer one week, break up with them and are seen with another the next week. It is a way for them to buy whatever they want without having to work a day in their life.

WAGs tend to sum up everything that is bad about football, the ridiculous amounts of money earned, the celebrity culture and the bling, as apposed to what football used to be about. There doesn’t seem to be any passion or loyalty left. Players are controlled by agents who are just interested in squeezing every penny out of the club for their players.

Overall it’s fair to say that more people hate them than like them, but they have become a permanent part of our lives, you can’t change that, I’m sure men aren’t complaining when they get to see Danielle Lloyd’s huge boobs in ‘Zoo’ every week! WAGs seem to have evolved from glamour models; many of them were glamour models, and then met a famous footballer who catapulted them from page 3 in the Sun to being a celebrity. Jordan or Katie Price was probably one of the first - she is England’s most famous glamour model, who married Dwight Yorke a while ago before divorcing him quickly.

Since then the rest have followed in her footsteps, and ironically, she has actually made more out of her life through NOT being a WAG. She now has successful lines of perfume, clothes, a TV show, you name it! Maybe that should be a message to the rest of the WAGs!