Football Culture – WAG’s

Football has changed beyond recognition over the last 10 to 20 years, and this is demonstrated perfectly by WAG’s. Footballers are now ridiculously well paid ‘celebrities’ with wives and girlfriends (WAG’s) to match! The sport aspect of football almost plays a back seat; now it is more important who you are seen with, and where. Some of the first WAG’s on the scene were Katie Price a.k.a. Jordan, and Victoria Beckham a.k.a. Posh spice. They really catapulted their husbands from sportsmen to celebrities by becoming a celebrity couple.

David Beckham is now a multi-millionaire living in Los Angeles, and is good friends with the likes of Tom Cruise. Think back 20 years to the late 80’s - could you ever have imagined a footballer would be doing that? I very much doubt it! After Posh spice and Jordan started this trend, it has continued and only grown. Now you can find the likes of Cheryl Cole, wife of Chelsea full back Ashley Cole, and Girls Aloud singer and Danielle Lloyd, ex-WAG of Teddy Sheringhams, who is a glamour model.

This whole WAG culture is a bad thing for football, and shows where it is heading. It might sound strange, but the actual football is almost becoming less and less important as the years go by. Players have absolutely zero loyalty to clubs, and it has been known that players have moved to London clubs because their wives prefer the shops there! They also seem to spend more time in the tabloids than on the sport pages, giving interviews to magazines like ‘OK’ and ‘Heat’ for celebrity-obsessed women.

The WAG’s ironically spend more time in the lads' mags! You will find the likes of Cheryl Cole and Danielle Lloyd taking their clothes off for them on nearly a weekly basis. I’m not suggesting there is anything wrong with this, in fact it’s a very good thing, but it would be better if we didn’t mix this entire thing with football. And to be fair, it isn’t the WAG’s fault, it is the players’ fault. They get loads of money, and yet they become more and more greedy, they are desperate for fame, and that is why they try to find famous WAG’s.

WAG’s came to prominence in the 2006 World Cup when Sven Goran Ericsson allowed the players’ wives and girlfriends to come along and stay with them (they usually don’t - to keep the players focused!), and it turned out to be a disaster! Players were pictured in bars drinking with them all the time, rather than taking the tournament seriously. Once again England’s ‘golden generation’ of footballers failed to impress, and ever since WAG’s have been as big a part of football as the players.

Who knows where it will all go from here, but one thing is sure: none of us would object to a WAG’s football league, especially if they lift their shirts over their head when they score! Maybe this is something that should be suggested to the FA?