WAGs: They Score!

Fans Cheer On Soccer Stars' Better Halves

LONDON, Aug. 8 -- They stand accused of doing little more than plunking down their fellas' plastic for designer labels, pampered holidays and ridiculously large handbags -- and large swaths of the British public love them for it.

Welcome to the world of the WAGs: the "wives and girlfriends" of England's soccer stars, without whom the British tabloids apparently couldn't publish. They are celebrated for their epic proportions of vanity and special knack for poolside posing. Some of the WAGs have talent beyond shopping or suntanning, but this is generally swept aside by the press, which prefers to scrutinize their saucer-size sunglasses or teeny-tiny shorts.

The undisputed queen of the WAGs is Victoria Beckham. She earned the rank at her purple-themed 1999 wedding to David Beckham, at which the couple memorably sat on his-and-hers thrones in an Irish castle. Victoria, the former Posh Spice of the Spice Girls, evidently did not accompany her husband to Washington for his team's MLS game Thursday against D.C. United, but she probably won't miss much: The star, nursing a bad ankle, is considered unlikely to play before the sellout crowd at RFK Stadium.

When the Beckhams -- or Posh and Becks as they are known over here -- announced in January that they were relocating to Los Angeles, where Beckham would play for the Galaxy, a wave of anxiety swept through the British tabloids: How would the British WAGs stack up against those in L.A.? Are American WAGs equally capable of dropping the GDP of a small country in an afternoon shopping spree? Did they tan on a daily basis?

A smattering of pictures soon appeared, comparing and contrasting transatlantic hairdos and handbags. The Mail on Sunday newspaper concluded that the California wives were "stay-at-home girls who dress in 'ordinary clothes' " and that they had "not a Chloe dress, a Prada handbag or a Manolo Blahnik shoe between them."

WAGs enjoy no comparable status in the United States, unless one of them does something extraordinary and/or outrageous to merit coverage. But the nonstop media attention paid in America to the likes of Britney, Paris and Lindsay provides a rough equivalent, especially in the ratio of column inches to degree of talent.

Max Clifford, a public relations agent in Britain who represents many famous people, described the British obsession with WAGs as a sort of Cinderella phenomenon: young girls witnessing ordinary women shoot to stardom simply through association.

"If you ask young girls here what they want, it's to be famous -- and anyone can be famous if you happen to be with the right footballer," said Clifford,

employing the term that everyone on the planet outside the United States uses instead of "soccer player."

WAGs are an extension of Britain's love affair with the sport, Clifford added: "The magazines are better off with them than without them. It's very empty and meaningless, but it's a little relief, and youngsters will read it."

For some, it's a lifetime achievement. Abigail Clancy, the on-again, off-again girlfriend of soccer player Peter Crouch, once told television producers that she wanted to "marry a footballer, get pregnant and then shop and have fun." On the reality show "Big Brother," a Posh look-alike recently declared in no uncertain terms that "I want to be a WAG," adding astutely that "you can get a career from there."

Not that WAGs are universally admired. In a series of interviews with young women on a recent afternoon in London, almost all of them had mixed emotions about Posh and "her ladies in waiting," as they are sometimes called.