The British press are everywhere. The tabloids "tagged along" (read got a tip-off and raced down to the bar) with the girlfriends, wives and sisters of the English team when they went out to celebrate the win on Saturday. Their coverage was positive. The amount of booze consumed is presented as evidence of exuberance . The tabloid press are a fickle lot however. The spin may turn nasty should Englands fortune change. There's a difference between this story and an equivilent version from years gone by: in the earlier version it would have been the players out on the lash.
Here's a shortened verion of the story from the Daily Mirror:
The lads drank 70 litres of water during the game and the girls - led by Coleen McLoughlin and Steven Gerrard's fianc?e Alex Curran - seemed determined to match that in booze.
The Thirst Wives Club sank 7 bottles of Moet Chandon champagne, 23 lemon or Red Bull vodkas, 12 glasses of lager, four Sambuccas, five orange liqueurs, a Bacardi & Coke and three packets of fags.
And just to make sure they didn't go overboard, the group - including Theo Walcott's sweetheart Melanie Slade, 17, and Coleen's mum Colette - threw in two bottles of water. But there was no shortage of high spirits. Frank Lampard's Spanish fianc?e Elen Rives, 28, showed she knew about being top of the table as she climbed on to one and held a glass aloft.
Laughing Coleen, 20, danced with an England fan, while her mum Colette, 43, made sure she wasn't left out as she also happily sashayed with a young man.
Others in the 20-strong party clambered on to the bar to drunkenly sing and dance as they partied for nearly five hours at a restaurant.
One onlooker who saw their antics in the early hours yesterday gasped: "If this is how they party after one win, I'd love to see what they'd be like if England won the World Cup.
"It was all good fun, though, and they had a great time dancing the night away."
However, just like their fellas on the pitch, the girls lost their way late on. After settling the 643.50 bar bill - around £440 - they staggered out at 4am but could not find the route back to their Baden Baden hotel half a mile away.
When they eventually stumbled in the right direction home, they linked arms to belt out soccer anthem Football's Coming Home.
Also in the gang were David Beckham's sister Joanne, 24' Joe Cole's lover Carly Zucker, 24' and Peter Crouch's new love Abigail Clancy, 20 - impressing on her girls' night out debut.
The "Wives and Girlfriends club" are a very English institution. These young lasses are in a league of their own and have a long (ish) history of working their way up through lower ranking players to bag the ultimate prize, a player on the England team. To do it in a world cup year, well that's the lottery jackpot. Three of these girls/women (average age 22) HAVE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES or "lifestyle" books coming out over the next 6 months! They live under such terrible pressure, what with all the shopping and socialising etc.
What if the boyfriend gets an injury and has to go home???
Bam! just like that, out of the limelight!
Here's a story telling of their struggles to cope with all of that pressure:
http://www.financialexpress.com/latest_full_story.php?content_id=130136
The world is a strange, strange place.
Back to work! Enough of this frivolous mind wandering.......
I hope all is well with all of you!
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3 comments:
Rats!!!
USA lost...
You know?
They interviewed this player from Costa Rica who said something about how being a soccer player gives them the opportunity to marry the most beautiful women regardless of how ugly they -the players- are.
What were you saying about a man's wallet?
Italy 1 Ghana 0 half time....c'mon ghana! settle down and finish your chances...teach the peacocks a lesson!!!!!!!!!!
The Italians are the best actors in the world. They Dive and preen and playact like spoilt children. This African team is inventive, passionate, and play for the love of the game. I walked by a pub and the roars you hear when they get a chance....The UK is WILLING the Africans to win......
Frivolous mind wandering is what I do for a living when in academia - in fact, it's essential to that biz. So in celebration of the World Cup, I've picked up a book by Toby Miller, "Sportsex" :
"Sportsex examines the landscape of sports writ globally. And it is about the way sport allows men and women—but mostly men—to consider their looks, their vitality, and their relationship to their gender in ways that would be considered taboo in any other context....In a world where everything is considered in its relationship to globalization, sport is one of the few arenas of social life that can be concretely seen in international terms."
Well, I do appreciate Terry's characterization of the different teams - everything from Puccini-esque melodrama to pan-African inventiveness - more please!
Manya
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