Читать книгу Welcome to My World - Coleen McLoughlin - Страница 7

This book starts on holiday, after the World Cup in Germany and Baden-Baden, because for the previous month or so it had felt like the so-called WAGs, including me, had been in the newspapers every day, and the life I’d been living for the past four years, all the brilliant things that had happened, had been squeezed into just a few weeks.

Germany had been crazy. All the press attention surrounding the WAGs was unbelievable. The WAGs? I don’t even like that label and here I am using it. That’s the power of the media. I don’t know which newspaper came up with the name in the beginning but it just seems to me like a sneery way of describing all the England footballers’ wives and partners. So, from here on in, this is a WAG-free zone! Anyway, back to Germany…People said afterwards that we must be pleased because of the amount of coverage we got, but none of us ever asked for it. Admittedly, some of the girls enjoyed it, but others didn’t. I don’t know…it was such a weird one, but I don’t think we deserved that much attention. The newspapers went over the top, following our every move, detailing how much we were spending, how much we were drinking, the fashion wars. They said there were divides, that there was a competition to see how many column inches each of us could get. Fair enough, some were more interested in that kind of thing than others, but there were never any problems between the girls. Loads of the wives and girlfriends have got kids, so that hinders everyone from all going out together at once.

The fact is, like in any walk of life, you get on better with some people than you do with others. I get on well with Steven Gerrard’s wife, Alex, and I think that’s because we both come from Liverpool and we have loads in common – but it’s also because the first time I ever went away with England, before the Euros in Portugal in 2004, she was the first girlfriend I met properly and got on well with. I’m friends with Jamie Carragher’s wife, Nicola, as well, who’s also from Liverpool.