WAG woes no more?

By Jan Lin

After booking a ticket to the 2010 World Cup this week, England’s new boss Fabio Capello has nipped England’s WAG woes in the bud by unabashedly issuing a “WAG restraint order” to limit the English footballers’ contact with their Wives And Girlfriends (WAG) in South Africa.

Whatever happened to ‘behind every successful man, is a woman’?

Perhaps the Italian maestro is going the distance to cover all grounds in securing his £5m reward for landing the 2010 World Cup for England, but it is at the same time revealing of what he deems is a banana skin in England’s quest for international success in recent years.

And I think that Capello is spot on. For never in the history of English football – or of football for that matter – have the wives and girlfriends of footballers been crowned with such media attention. So much so that England’s 2006 World Cup campaign was a “WAG Circus”.

It is uncanny that shortly after Sven-Göran Eriksson succeeded homegrown Kevin Keegan in 2001, England struck a 5-1 victory over nemesis Germany to eventually finish on top of their 2002 World Cup qualification group and the popularity of the new Swede boss hit the skies.

England’s first foreign boss, Eriksson, had replaced Kevin Keegan following an unsuccessful Euro 2000 campaign. In the same manner, Fabio Capello came on board for Englishman Steve McClaren after their catastrophic Euro 2008. Is it me or is this a never ending vicious cycle?

And 8 years since England’s first taste of a non-English boss, England marched into the 2010 World Cup also with a 5-1 thrashing of new nemesis Croatia under the second foreign boss. With such a splitting resemblance, no wonder the Italian is adamant to break the hoodoo.

For Eriksson’s popularity plummeted from hero to zero following England’s miserable outing at the 2006 World Cup. Even though under Eriksson, England found its way back into the FIFA top 10 world ranking table, but it was often his Casanova antics that found the headlines.

I’ve always considered the scandal-ridden boss the pepetrator of the WAG culture in English football. While missus Posh Spice was already in the house at time of Eriksson’s appointment, it wasn’t until the Swede’s affairs – from Ulrika Jonsson to Faria Alam – did all hell break loose.

(And doesn’t Nancy Dell’Olio look like a mamasan to you?)

The English media’s interest in, or should I say fascination with, the footballers’ women hit an all-time high ever since and exploded out of proportion at the 2006 World Cup in Germany. So Capello’s response says, ‘If you do what you always do, you will get what you always get’.

Secretly, I do feel a mixture of relief and disappointment. I don’t deny that the WAG stories do provide a new brand of sports entertainment as much as I do appreciate football for football. And as much as I’m amused by Capello’s WAG ultimatum, I’m optimistic for a different England.