'Wagatha Christie' trial overshadows all things EPL in UK
By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist
The biggest story in England right now, the one filling the front pages of the tabloid newspapers, is all about soccer.
Well, kind of.
It should be no surprise that the beautiful game is on everyone’s lips, this being May and all, and the English Premier League title race about to come to its conclusion.
Yet the intoxicating tale that’s got Great Britain gossiping doesn’t involve throw-ins and penalty kicks, but an extraordinary court case that’s peeling back the layers on how the country’s most popular sport sometimes becomes inextricably linked with celebrity culture.
The juiciest battle at present isn’t the tussle between Manchester City and Liverpool for the EPL crown, but the $4 million libel lawsuit waged between Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney, respective wives of two of England’s best-known recent players.
Rooney’s husband, Wayne, is a former captain of the national team and its all-time record goalscorer, having recently concluded a career that spanned nearly two decades and included a late pitstop with Major League Soccer’s DC United.
Vardy’s husband, Jamie, was a late bloomer who helped his club Leicester City complete one of the sport’s greatest shocks by winning the 2015-16 EPL title as 5000-to-1 underdogs.
Every detail of the spat is being played out for an audience of a few in London’s High Court and millions across print media. It centers around Coleen Rooney’s suspicion back in 2019 that someone within her circle of friends was leaking stories about her to The Sun, Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper.
The Sun loves nothing more than tidbits about the WAGs — wives and girlfriends of elite soccer stars — given that they are typically glamorous, clad themselves in outrageously expensive garb and are often involved in storylines that keep tabloids in business.
So, Coleen Rooney embarked upon an elaborate plan to discover the leak. Suspecting Rebekah Vardy, she posted a series of fake stories on her Instagram, but filtered the messages so they could only be seen by her now-courtroom rival. The ruse included claims she had been involved in a car accident, that her basement was flooded during a storm and that she was considering using gender selection science in order to conceive a baby girl.
She later claimed to have unearthed the culprit — publicly naming Rebekah Vardy — who responded by launching the libel action that is now providing coffee-shop chatter for countless Brits.
So far, so showbiz. On Tuesday, however, things became decidedly more soccer-centric. Wayne Rooney took the stand and the thorny subject of the England team’s campaign at the 2016 European Championships came to the forefront.
Rooney claimed he had been asked by then-England head coach Roy Hodgson and assistant Gary Neville to speak to Jamie Vardy about his wife’s behavior. During the tournament, Rebekah Vardy was providing media content for The Sun, and, according to a witness, would deliberately position herself behind the better-known Coleen Rooney in the stands at games, knowing that’s where the television cameras would frequently point.
Vardy denied Rooney ever spoke to him about the matter, describing it as "nonsense," and now men who once were teammates and partners on the front line of the England attack, are firmly pitched against each other.
"Whatever the outcome, I will always love both [Rooney] and [Vardy]," wrote England soccer legend Gary Lineker, on Twitter.
The 2016 Euros has long been a sore point for England, with the team having been strongly favored for a deep run in the competition, only to suffer an embarrassing defeat to Iceland in the Round of 16. Similarly, the role of the WAGs at major tournaments has also been a topic of consistent scrutiny, with many fans — and some head coaches — believing the media circus that surrounds them to be a distraction.
In the "Wagatha Christie" case, as the Rooney/Vardy ruckus has become known, public sentiment flows back and forth each day, and some of the subplots verge on the absurd. For example, a cell phone that was due to be used as evidence and allegedly contained relevant texts between Mrs. Vardy and her agent was allegedly dropped into the North Sea on a boating excursion.
The respective attendance of the soccer stars Rooney and Vardy has also topic of conversation. Wayne Rooney, currently head coach of Derby County, has been by his wife’s side each day. Jamie Vardy, who scored twice in Leicester’s 5-1 win at Watford on Sunday, made his first appearance in court on Tuesday.
The case will come to a close soon enough, or perhaps too soon for the media outlets providing every drip of succulent detail to a willing reader base. It is whatever you make of it, a farcical sideshow, the most modern of soap operas, a daily fashion show, a commentary on how case law struggles to keep up with the evolving quirks of social media.
Or maybe, more than anything, proof that when it comes to soccer — anything to do with soccer — England simply can’t get enough of it.
The trial continues.
Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.