Wags reveal dark side of being with a footballer – from Jacuzzi sex scandals and death threats to drunken beatings
MILLIONS of pounds in the bank, designer clothes, luxury holidays and never having to work again… dating a Premiership footballer would be the dream for many people.
But, in reality, there’s a much darker side to being a Wag.
England player Jack Grealish’s girlfriend Sasha Attwood has revealed she was sent 200 death threats a day from trolls on TikTok and Instagram during the Euros.
Sasha said: “They said, ‘I hope you get cancer and die’ or ‘I hope your whole family dies’.
“They say, ‘I hope the next time you’re in the car you crash it and die, I hope after Wembley you die’.”
And she's not the only Wag to have spoken about the less glamorous side of dating a footballer.
Many former partners - including Louise Redknapp and Lizzie Cundy - have opened up on the intense loneliness, paranoia and fear of cheating that comes with the luxury lifestyle.
"There is so much more to being in a relationship with a footballer than going out and looking a certain way,” Louise said.
“Of course, being in football offers amazing opportunities, and footballers are paid huge sums of money, but it's not all straightforward.”
‘It was like I was invisible’
Louise Redknapp was married to Jamie Redknapp for 19 years, splitting up in 2017.
And she’s revealed how disrespectful other women could be, constantly hitting on the former England player when she was with him.
In her book, You've Got This And Other Things I Wish I Had Known, she said: “Jamie is a successful, good-looking and wealthy sportsman, and I felt like he could have married any girl he wanted to.
“I had always had great relationships with the other women, but for the first time, I started to notice that some women don't appear to acknowledge that a man is married or has a girlfriend.”
She continued: "Everywhere we went, glamorous and gorgeous women tried to get Jamie's attention.
“They would sidle over to him in clubs, flicking their hair, all dolled up in their heels and tight dresses.
“It was like I was invisible to these women - or maybe they just didn't care.
“Either way I started to feel less confident in myself and what I had to offer Jamie."
Affairs with team-mates' wives
Lizzie Cundy, who was married to former Chelsea and Spurs defender Jason Cundy at the height of his career, from 1994 to 2012, claims footballers often cheated on their partners.
"It may be different now, but in my WAG days, Football clubs were very incestuous," she told The Sun.
She added: "They’re made up of players from across the world and the country, who only regularly hang out with people from within that club - and that leads to a lot of club affairs.
"I know of footballers having affairs with other players' wives – luckily, I managed to avoid all of that."
The most high-profile case of this was John Terry - who was caught having an affair with French model Vanessa Perroncel - the ex long-term girlfriend of his former England team-mate Wayne Bridge.
Slept with 'granny prostitute'
Wayne and Coleen Rooney have been married since June 2008, having met as childhood sweethearts.
However, the couple - who have four children, Kai, 11, Klay, eight, Kit, five, and Kass, three, between them - have suffered cheating allegations throughout their marriage.
Most recently, Wayne was pictured in a hotel room with three semi-naked 21-year-old girls.
It came two years after Coleen ditched her wedding ring after the ex-England captain partied with a barmaid, while his wife was 900 miles away with the kids at their home.
There were also rumours Wayne paid for sex with prostitutes in 2004, before he and Coleen got married.
The Sunday Mirror reported he paid £140 for sex with prostitute Charlotte Glover, then 21, and gave her his autograph as a “souvenir”.
That same year he was said to have slept with Gina McCarrick, then 37, at Liverpool brothel, which he visited 10 times, and was caught on CCTV.
It was at this same brothel that he was said to have slept with grandmother Patricia Tierney, then 48, who wore a rubber catsuit and was known as the "Auld Slapper".
£10,000 affair hush money
Ashley Cole and Cheryl were another couple who were rocked by cheating allegations throughout their marriage.
Two years after their lavish 2006 wedding day, there were reports of Ashley's first alleged hook-up with hairdresser Aimee Walton.
In the explosive revelations, the footballer was said to be so drunk that he threw up during their romp.
Discussing the moment she learned about his cheating, Cheryl wrote in her explosive memoir: "'I hope you enjoyed it!' I screamed. 'I hope she was worth it! It’s the end of your marriage!
"'You don’t understand what you’ve done. It’s f***ed!' After hours of me ranting, screaming and crying uncontrollably, I was exhausted."
The couple tried put this behind them, but at the start of 2010, it was revealed Ashley had allegedly cheated again with four more women - including a model, who claimed the footballer gave her £10,000 to keep quiet.
Cheryl and Ashley split in 2010.
'I check my husband's phone'
Due to these kinds of stories coming out, a Wag blogger has confessed how paranoid she felt as the wife of an England and Premier League footballer.
I Am The Secret Wag explained how she’s never been the same since her husband was named in a kiss-and-tell story.
"Even though I now believe the story was fabricated, I sit and worry to the point of neurosis about what he is up to when he’s out with his mates on a Saturday night," she admitted.
"A Wag friend of mine checks her husband’s phone at every opportunity she can, examines his clothing after a night out for lipstick stains, perfume aromas, phone numbers etc.
"I am not by any means as bad as her, but I do fear being the last to know that my husband is a cheating b*****!
"The thought of reading another sex-scandal headline with his name in it, without any warning, completely freaks me out.
"So I have turned into a snoop. I am a phone-checker and if he leaves his Facebook account open on our home computer, I look at his private messages too.
"He hates it that I don’t trust him one hundred per cent, but I think I’d be an absolute fool if I did."
Jacuzzi sex parties
The Secret Wag also revealed she’d heard of top premiership players who are all involved in a “small, discreet swinging circle”.
She said: "My Wag friend told me that one of the couples has a huge Jacuzzi in their house - big enough for at least ten people - where the group of footballers and Wags drink a lot of alcohol then have sex with a different partner... or many different partners.”
Beaten for six years
Paul Gascoigne married Sheryl in July 1996.
However, the marriage was extremely turbulent.
Gazza's alcoholism has been well-documented and, in 1994, he admitted he'd been beating Sheryl on a regular basis for two years.
By the time of their wedding he had been hitting her for four years, then weeping and begging for forgiveness, blaming his insecurities and the fear that she would run off with another man.
Sheryl confessed she was naive enough to believe that if she married him, the violence would stop.
It didn’t, and, two years later, they divorced.
"When I was a footballer’s wife it wasn’t what you’d call glamorous anyway," she told the Sunday Times.
"Paul wouldn’t socialise. My friends say, ‘He kept you in a box so he could pull you out when he wanted you.’"
She added: "A lot of footballers are old-fashioned, possessive.”
'Christmas cancelled'
Lizzie Cundy, who has two sons with Jason, revealed how one of the biggest things she learned as a Wag is that footballers always put their career before anyone, including their wife and kids.
"When you become a footballer’s wife or girlfriend, essentially you sign up to being their full-time carer,” she previously told The Sun.
“Even what you have to eat is tailored around him, because you have to make lunches, breakfast and dinners to suit his fitness plan and his training schedule.”
She continued: “Christmas Day isn’t really a thing. The biggest matches are on Boxing Day, so if your man’s team are playing away, it could mean them travelling away, so they have to leave on Christmas Day to go to a hotel.
"You do presents early, you eat early, there’s no booze and you can’t have people around because it has to be a quiet day of prep.
“It isn’t really a family time together which is tough for young kids, especially."
Intense loneliness
And Louise - who has two sons, Beau and Charles, with Jamie - shared that same sentiment in her book.
She wrote: "For a long time, I ticked all the boxes of being the 'picture-perfect' wife.
"The truth? For a lot of that time, I actually felt lonely, anxious and unimportant."
Louise added: "Looking back, I wish I'd sat down and really tried to explain how much I was struggling, how unimportant I felt in our lives together and how depressed this made me feel.
"I wish I'd been honest and said I felt unloved. I never spoke about how things were at home to a single soul."
She also said she felt like her and the kids would always come second to Jamie's job.
She revealed: "You might be asked to pack up your kids and move countries with forty-eight hours' notice because your husband has been signed to a new team.
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“It's not easy for your kids to be uprooted and to have to leave their friends and schools when they're happy and settled."
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“It's not easy for your kids to be uprooted and to have to leave their friends and schools when they're happy and settled.
"You might spend months or years supporting your partner after a bad injury, or trying to be there for someone whose career was over at thirty-five and who is now struggling to find a new role because they can never recapture the buzz they used to feel when playing.”