sport news Wagatha Christie trial has exposed the embarrassing, greedy, not-so-Beautiful ... trends now

Every English football fan should feel let down by the sordid revelations of the Wagatha Christie libel trial.

Before each season and ahead of every international tournament, we convince ourselves our heroes are pulling in the same direction; focused on the challenges to come.

We invest our hope in those players for club and country, but Premier League footballers are precariously perched on their pedestals, built and maintained by the hands of PRs and agents, who control everything.

So, the last eight days at the High Court has been an eye opener. Even when the players are in it together, those close to them may not be.

With no press handlers to smooth out the wrinkles, Rebekah Vardy's defamation claim against Coleen Rooney has lifted the lid and laid bare a grim reality: everything and everyone in football can be sold out for profile, influence and a few quid, regardless of the impact. 

Rebekah, 40, the wife of Jamie Vardy, the Leicester City and former England striker, sued Coleen, 36, the wife of Wayne Rooney, the legendary former Manchester United and England captain, for libel.

The dispute is over a social media post in which Coleen claimed a sting operation identified her rival WAG as the source of leaks from her private Instagram account.

Coleen's sleuthing led to the case being dubbed 'Wagatha Christie'. But the £3million trial, which has now concluded with a judgement to be handed down next month, cast a net far beyond Coleen's Insta, painting an unedifying picture of shameless self-promotion at any cost.

For starters, we learned that England's dismal Euro 2016 campaign, which saw the Three Lions humiliated, dumped out of the competition by minnows Iceland, was allegedly disrupted by Rebekah's extensive media activities.

It caused unrest in the camp and according to Wayne Rooney, who was the team captain, it farcically led him to officially request his strike partner, Jamie Vardy, tell his wife to 'calm down'.

We also discovered that Danny Drinkwater, with whom Jamie achieved what most people thought to be impossible - winning the Premier League title with Leicester in 2016 - was offered up to influential journalists without a second thought following his arrest for drink-driving after crashing his Range Rover in 2019, and information was also shared on the then Leicester winger Riyad Mahrez.

How did it come to this?

The drama that culminated in London's High Court this week can be traced to the spring of 2016. It was then that the wives and girlfriends – the WAGs - of England hopefuls began gearing up for the tournament in France.

The hard yards put in by the glamorous partners of aspiring England players were breathlessly celebrated in society pages - and on Instagram: the workouts, personal trainers, home gyms, short breaks, accessories, fake tan top ups, the diets and the juicing were all documented in painstaking detail.

Euro 2016 was to be the return of the WAGs and, for those who wanted it, the event could be the perfect opportunity to build their profile, to establish their brand, and wrap it all up in French chic. They would be ready.

Curiously, given what we know now, Rebekah Vardy insisted she was not one of them.

'My main concern is to be there to support Jamie, as his wife... It's to be there to support him, not to join a fashion parade,' Rebekah was quoted in the Evening Standard prior to the tournament. 

But the evidence at the High Court appeared to tell a very different story and Rebekah maxed out her exposure to the point at which even the placid England boss, Roy Hodgson, had his patience tested to the limit.

The WAG tradition had been established 10 years earlier at the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

'The originals' stormed the pretty German spa town of Baden Baden, and included in their ranks a 20-year-old Coleen.

Led by the self-styled queen, Victoria Beckham, the 2006 WAGs went on a spectacular one-month bender, designer shopping by day and partying hard by night.

'They were lipstick ladettes who swore like dockers, partied like rock stars and dressed as if they were on their way to a strippers' convention in Las Vegas,' observed Daily Mail columnist, Jan Moir.

Unfortunately, the WAGs made more impact off the field than England managed on it, and Sven-Goran Eriksson's team were knocked out of the tournament, losing in the quarter finals to Portugal on penalties.

The sideshow was described as a 'circus' by England defender Rio Ferdinand, never to be repeated.

By the time of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, England's authoritarian coach, Fabio Capello, had put a stop to that kind of caper. But Capello went too far, and as England's Golden Generation failed again, it was claimed the players had been bored and isolated at their remote South African residence.

So, in 2016, the WAGS were back, but with limits imposed by Hodgson.

They were banned from the £900-a-night Auberge du Jeu de Paume hotel in the grounds of Chateau de Chantilly, where the England squad was based.

Les rendezvous between players and partners were sanctioned only after matches, with stars chauffeured to the luxury villas that billeted their loved ones, some of whom were dotted across the French countryside.

Rebekah was right, 2016 was not a fashion parade. England shirts with your beau's name emblazoned across the back were de rigueur, rather than Louis Vuitton and Gucci.

And the WAGery was no longer just a land war waged in bars and boutiques in front of trigger-happy paparazzi, it was also a virtual campaign, which required a different set of tactics.

It all got off to the perfect start for the former party-planner Rebekah, when she wed Jamie at a lavish ceremony at the exclusive Peckforton Castle in Cheshire, the month before the tournament began.

The star-studded guest list included One Direction's Louis Tomlinson, rapper Tinchy Stryder and Kasabian frontman Serge Pizzorno strutting their stuff.

Not only that, the couple were dubbed the 'new Posh and Becks' as the party was splashed across Hello! Magazine.

Some thought it was an unnecessary distraction for Vardy, who was one of England's big hopes after a spectacular season with Leicester. But it clocked up the likes on social media all the same.

However, Coleen, already a veteran of major tournaments and operating at peak WAG, left everyone trailing in her wake. She had amassed 1.24million Twitter followers and 320,000 Instagram fans by the time the tournament began.

So, Rebekah, we were told, targeted Coleen from England's second match of the competition, a 2-1 win over Wales in the northern city of Lens. It looked like a 'man-marking' exercise that would have graced any football team.

'The seat that Rebekah was sat in during the game on 16 June 2016 was not her allocated seat,' FA family liaison officer, Harpreet Robertson, explained in a written statement to the court.

It appeared that Rebekah 'wanted to be sat in the seats that were right in the eye line of anyone looking at, or photographing, Coleen,' added Robertson. 

Rebekah denied the claim, saying Ms Robertson 'took an immediate dislike to her'. 

'I find it quite interesting,' Rebekah told the court. 'I think it's nonsense, absolute nonsense.'

Whatever the reason she sat where she did, images from the game, in which her husband Jamie scored the equalizer, before Daniel Sturridge netted the winning goal in injury time, consistently captured both Rebekah and Coleen in their celebrations.

'Her behaviour during the game suggested to me that her focus was little or nothing to do with the football match,' Robertson recalled. 'I remember that Rebekah was constantly on her phone, often taking selfies and generally showing very little interest in the match itself.'

The shenanigans over the seat swap prompted 'security concerns', according to the FA officer, and ended in an altercation with Rebekah's guests that 'almost reduced me to tears', said Robertson.

'I asked them to move but they refused and were incredibly rude and abusive to me, remarking words to the effect of "we can sit where we like, f*** off".'

But does any of that matter? It does if it starts to impact on the team. 

Sports psychologists try to minimise the distractions for elite athletes at major tournaments. In other sports, there have long been plans in place to explore distractions with competitors ahead of competition and family are briefed on what to say and do, when the games commence, to give the athlete the best possible chance of success.

There was nothing like that in place in the England setup at Euro 2016. And Rebekah's high profile at the tournament was starting to look like a distraction within the England camp, the court heard.

Rebekah had received attention when she tweeted from Marseille, where England played Russia on June 11.

English fans clashed with French police the day before the game and then fights broke out with Russian supporters after the match, which finished 1-1 when Russia scored a 91st-minute leveller.

'In the carnage with England fans,' tweeted Rebekah, clutching a pint of lager.

But later Rebekah took aim at the French authorities, which no doubt troubled the England management: 'Teargassed for no reason, caged and treated like animals! Shocking.'

Meanwhile, Rebekah was documenting her adventures in a column for The Sun and in various TV interviews, while FaceTiming her new husband so frequently, according to evidence given in court, that the other players felt she was there with them at the Auberge du Jeu de Paume.

With his team needing a win against Iceland in England's first (and only) knockout match, England boss Hodgson and his assistant, Gary Neville, who is now Sky pundit, decided they had to act and it is claimed they asked Wayne Rooney, as the team captain, to intervene.

Wayne gave a devastating performance in the witness box at the High Court. Calmly, almost reluctantly, he documented the events that followed.

He disclosed that the England players agreed before the tournament that they didn't want any 'distractions'.

'We didn't want any newspaper columns,' he added.

With Rebekah and Jamie sat in front of him in court, Rooney described how Hodgson and Neville had asked him to broach the delicate subject with his team-mate, and to ask him to tell his wife to 'calm down'.

It seems remarkable that it fell to a player to undertake such delicate negotiations. But over a Red Bull and coffee the chat went ahead at the team hotel.

'They asked me, as captain, would I be able to speak to Mr Vardy on issues regarding his wife and I think we all knew that it was an awkward subject,' Rooney recalled in evidence. 'I'd need to speak to Mr Vardy and ask him to speak to his wife and ask his wife to calm down.'

Rebekah's lawyer Hugh Tomlinson QC asked Rooney: 'Ask his wife to calm down - she wasn't dancing on tables?' 

Rooney said: 'No, I wasn't aware of that. It was a lot of negativity amongst a lot of media coverage, which as a group of players and as the manager of England he didn't want that to happen, so he asked would I be able to speak to Jamie and I went and done so.' 

The claim was quickly dismissed outside the court by Jamie, who issued a statement accusing Rooney of 'talking nonsense' before leaving the hearing early with his wife, who was feeling unwell.

The Leicester player's representatives said: 'Wayne is talking nonsense. He must be confused because he never spoke to me about issues concerning Becky's media work at Euro 2016. There was nothing to speak about, I know this because I discuss everything with Becky.' 

However, Coleen's barrister David Sherborne rebuked Jamie in his closing argument for complaining about the allegations outside the Royal Courts of Justice - but not giving evidence under oath. 

During the tournament itself, a similar story had leaked out of the England camp. The Times reported that 'the captain and other senior players have spoken to Jamie Vardy about the prominence of his new wife, Rebekah, in the media'.

England emerged from Group B at Euro 2016, following a 0-0 draw with Slovakia, but the story prompted questions to Rooney at a press conference on the eve of England's round of 16 match against Iceland.

Hodgson jumped in: 'I will answer for Wayne. There are no problems between Wayne Rooney and Jamie Vardy. They are good friends and this is a salacious story that has been spun.'

Hodgson had reason to be sensitive about any

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