While it is true that soccer players have the best butts in sports (get all the way out of here, baseball stans) I’ve never once cared enough about any athlete to learn about them, their personal lives, and the drama that tethers them to the personal lives of other athletes’ and their families. But that, clearly, was a mistake. The latest and greatest real housewives beef is taking place across the pond, and I can only hope Andy Cohen and his Bravo cohort are taking notes. It involves two women who are married to soccer players (it’s called football over there, pinkies up, y’all). English tabloids refer to such women as “WAGs.” The more you know. Let’s get on with it.
The Players
Coleen Rooney: She is the wife of “former England soccer captain and MLS star Wayne Rooney, who now plays for D.C. United,” according to the Daily Beast. In the photograph above, she’s on the left.
Rebekah Vardy: She is the wife of “a striker, who used to play alongside Rooney in the English national soccer team,” once again, according to the Daily Beast. Above, she’s on the right.
The Drama
According to the Guardian, Rooney noticed that posts from her private social media accounts (since when do moms use Finsta?) were beginning to appear in English tabloid The Sun, confirming her suspicions that someone who had access to the account was feeding her information to the gossip rag. In order to uncover exactly who was the culprit, Rooney blocked everyone from her posts except one person. Through a process of elimination and by posting false stories on the account over the course of five months—including an item about gender selection in Mexico and a basement flooding, which appeared in The Sun shortly afterward—Rooney said she discovered that Rebekah Vardy was the one sharing those intimate details. Why? Because Vardy was the only one who saw them.
The Fallout
Rooney decided to share her findings on social media, stating that she has “saved and screenshotted all the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them. It’s ……….Rebekah Vardy’s account.”
Vardy responded 30 minutes later and, realizing she’d been found out, went with the oldest defense in the book: She said she was hacked. “Over the years various people have had access to my insta & just this week I found I was following people I didn’t know and have never followed myself,” she wrote. “I’m not being funny but I don’t need the money, what would I gain from selling stories on you?”
What Now?
I’m not sure, but I can only hope it continues on forever? The Guardian reports that the Sun denied that Vardy was the source of their Rooney gossip, and that Rooney’s representatives declined to comment before any of the fake stories made it to print. They have, however, updated old articles to specify that the gossip might have been fabricated so…. there’s that.