England’s 2006 World Cup campaign was overshadowed by the antics that unfolded in Baden-Baden – and late England boss Sven-Goran Eriksson took aim at Victoria Beckham in particular.
The Three Lions’ WAGs went wild in the German spa town, with Victoria admitting years later “things went a bit too far”. Images of the WAGs dancing on tables were commonplace in newspapers, while they racked up huge bills at bars and restaurants.
Speaking to Boyle Sports World Cup, Sven said: “One of the wives [at the World Cup] was Victoria Beckham and of course, that didn’t make it easier, it made it fantastic for the press. But all the other countries, Sweden for example, I knew exactly what they did with their wives and so on.
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“I don’t think any Swedish paper ever talked about it because it’s natural and I think most of the teams were doing that. We saw the wives maybe once a week at dinner and I decided when that should be.
“The rest of the days of course the wives were invited here and there and the FA helped them not to be sat in a hotel, bored, and I think that was great.” He continued: “Whatever they did it was a scandal. If they went to a bar, if they went to a restaurant if they went out shopping, they were [doing] totally normal things – I found the reaction a little bit unhelpful.”
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(Image: PA Archive/Press Association Images)
Speaking a couple of years after the World Cup, footballing star Rio Ferdinand admitted: “We became a bit of a circus. Football almost became a secondary element to the main event. People were worrying more about what people were wearing or where people were going than the England football team.
“Beckham believed wives should be there.” Some fans blamed the WAGs for crashing out of the World Cup to Portugal early on, but David Davies, then of the FA, said: “In Baden-Baden, a lot of people had a lot of fun – but it did not cost us the World Cup.”