It is to Alan Birchenall, a former Leicester City player, that we must turn for an incisive analysis of how the courtship rituals and mate selection of top-ranking football players conform to strictly Darwinian principles. ”You see lots of ugly footballers,” he said. ”But you never see any ugly footballers’ wives.”
Well put, Alan. Because maybe the day will come when an England player marries a woman who is marginally on the homely side, or is just the tiniest bit uninterested in shopping and fashion. But the 2006 World Cup is not the moment to indulge in such far-fetched flights of fancy.
It is the moment, rather, for us to feed on stories of Posh’s pre-departure Beckingham Palace charity ball; on the luggage restrictions the Football Association (FA) is enforcing (one wife, one suitcase) and on what Coleen and Wayne eat for their supper (”Coleen McLoughlin has revealed her fiance Wayne Rooney loves lettuce,” says the Sun).
The ”wives” — encompassing as it does married spouses, unmarried partners, live-in lovers and 17-year-old schoolgirls — are preparing themselves. They are honing wardrobes, topping up spray tans, practising camera smiles. And if there’s something about this that strikes you as slightly backwards, you would be right.
Because being a footballer’s wife is not entirely the merry go-round of hermaphrodite babies and having- your breasts set on fire that the TV series might have led you to believe. In reality, being a footballer’s wife is the closest thing the modern age has to being a diplomatic wife; a diplomatic wife, that is, complete with a codified set of behaviour rules, a rigorous dress code and a punitive social convention that frowns on the idea that you might want to have normal marital relations with your husband.
Key skills, rather, are looking decorative and smiling politely. On no account should you attempt to interfere in matters of state — match analysis is strictly for the men — and you will be expected to socialise extensively with the other wives according to a strict hierarchical pecking order.
In many ways, it is a harsh set of realities to take on board. You have been chosen at least partly for your looks, but, although you will be judged on your appearance, mocked over your choice in shoes, disparaged at length in Heat if you wear something that was fashionable last month, rather than this month, your salary expectations for next year (the amount that can be earned from celebrity endorsements) are contingent not on whether your new hair extensions look pretty but if your husband manages to score any goals.
In fact, there is an argument that the whole thing is a retro pastiche masterminded by a quasi-militaristic group called something like Football Fans Against Feminism. Think about it. How else to explain the fact that ”the wives” are an official part of the English squad, quartered at the FA’s expense in an official hotel? Or the way Coleen and Alex and Cheryl rushed to embrace the ”new girl”, Theo Walcott’s girlfriend, Melanie Slade (”They told me just to relax and to be myself so that is what I’ll try to do”), in a rather creepily accurate re-enactment of that scene from The Stepford Wives.
And while it’s tempting to imagine that it is all just the British Anglo-Saxon way of deflecting attention from the fact that their team is unlikely to win, a glance at the player lists for other national squads reveals that there is a near-global affinity between men with multimillion-pound contracts and women with perky breasts and long glossy hair.
It’s to be expected that a flamboyant Italian such as striker Francesco Totti should be dating a pneumatic gameshow host such as Ilary Blasi. And that the star of the Ukraine side, Andriy Shevchenko, should recently have married Kristen Pazik, a catwalk model. But it goes beyond that. Paraguay forward Roque Santa Cruz is married to a blonde lovely called Giselle, the sister of a former team-mate. The wife of South Korea’s Ahn Jung-Hwan is a former Miss Korea.
It is here that a special mention must be made of Iran. A conservative theocratic republic, arguably one place where you might expect to find some deviation from the standard model, but Mehdi Mahdavikia, the national side’s star who currently plays for Hamburg, has a particularly thorny issue to confront before this year’s tournament: which wife to bring. German newspapers revealed that he had one wife, Sepideh, in Iran, and another, Samira, in Germany.
England’s Girls, therefore, will have competition. Because success is not about goals but photo ops and, whatever our quarrels with the nature of the competition, we will all end up pulling together behind the national side.
Dolly-birdism is alive and kicking and a global phenomenon, as any casual flick through Zoo, or FHM, or a Google search that involves the words ”footballer”, ”wife” and ”nude photos” will reveal.
It is yet to be seen how the wives will play. Will Coleen maintain her current position out front? Or could injury spoil her chances? Is Posh still up there with a striking chance? Or is she now past her prime?
There is little doubt that England will win ahead of Sweden, now that Magnus Hedman has retired, depriving the side of one half of the will-strip-for-cash double act of his wife Magdalena Graaf and Bing up front. And Brazil, as ever, will take some beating. But, ultimately, the field is wide open. Anything could happen. A haircut could go wrong. A spaghetti-dress strap could fail. It is just that kind of game. — Â