England's Jamie Vardy (left) discusses with teammate Wayne Rooney during a match against Scotland on November 11, 2016 in London. Photo: IC

 
The oddest story of the recent international break involved Rooney and Vardy but it was not former England teammates Wayne and Jamie but the pair's wives. Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy were involved in a very unusual story.

WAG-gate - coming from the acronym for "wives and girlfriends" - went global. From The New York Times (headline: "A British person explains the War of the WAGs") to CNN ("Footballers' wives at war change Britain forever") and E! News ("Breaking Down the Internet's Most Buzzed-About Feud") in the US to featuring in media outlets in Germany, Norway and India. In academic website The Conversation, the headline was "What 'Coleen Rooney vs Rebekah Vardy' tells us about contemporary gender politics." This is bigger than sport.

Like so many stories these days, it started with a tweet. Using a screenshot from a note-taking app on her phone, Rooney laid out the whole sorry saga and the story of the year.

She had been worried about stories being leaked to the British tabloid newspaper The Sun, stories that emanated from posts she had only shared on her private Instagram account - an account that, unlike her public profile, was only seen by friends and family she had approved.

"This has been a burden in my life for a few years now and finally I have got to the bottom of it," wrote Rooney in the post that would go on to grip social media and the global press.

"Over the past five months, I have posted a series of false stories to see if they made their way into The Sun newspaper," Rooney explained. "And you know what, they did! The story about gender selection in Mexico, the story about returning to TV and then the latest story about the basement flooding in my new house."

Lo and behold, each of these stories had been sold to The Sun and the proof was there on the newspaper's website where the stories remain, albeit amended to say that they are false.

"I have saved and screenshotted the original stories which clearly show just one person has viewed them," she carried on.

The post ended with the immortal line: "It's… Rebekah Vardy's account."

Social media responded with the hashtag "Wagatha Christie" and more memes than even Rooney could investigate, from reworkings of the classic board game Guess Who? To unmasking Vardy as a villain in Scooby-Doo. Netflix suggested they would make a film of the story, British star Keira Knightley threw herself forward as the woman to do it.

Vardy responded pleading her innocence. "Over the years various people have had access to my insta and just this week I found I was following people I didn't know and have never followed myself."

She said she was "not being funny" but she did not need the money that she stood to gain from selling stories on Rooney.

"I liked you a lot Coleen and I'm so upset that you have chosen to do this, especially when I'm heavily pregnant. I'm disgusted that I'm even having to deny this. You should have called me the first time this happened," she tweeted.

Over on Instagram there was the revelation that she was taking legal advice while an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail carried the line "That would be like arguing with a pigeon. You can tell it that you are right and it is wrong, but it's still going to s*** in your hair," on whether she argued with Rooney in the aftermath of the revelatory tweet.

"We are having a forensic cybersecurity expert look at it now, first to see if it really did come from my account," Vardy went on, while claiming not to be an "expert" in social media.

Stranger than fiction 

It was as unexpected as it was remarkable and almost impossible to believe it was actually happening. Even the cult British TV show Footballers' Wives, which ran from 2002 to 2006, would have seemed like it was stretching its already gossamer thin sheen of credulity with a tale along these lines.  

The Sun remained silent on the whole thing and neither footballing husband has commented but it will be a question asked of them the next time they are in front of a microphone. Wayne has escaped that for the time being as his DC United side are out of the MLS playoffs and he is not due to join English Championship side Derby County until the January transfer window.

Jamie is unlikely to be so lucky when the English Premier League resumes after the international break. His Leicester City side host Burnley at the King Power Stadium on Saturday and if it is not media commitments that come first it will be the wit of the traveling fans. They are likely to be in full voice over the matter just as the next few of Leicester's opponents will be until another story has taken over the national consciousness.

World Cup 'circus'

WAGs are big business. Many have turned their hands to TV (both Rooeny and Vardy have) and businesswomen. They have also been a cause of concern for football managers over the years.  David Beckham's departure from Manchester United was in part down to the celebrity lifestyle he was cultivating with pop star wife Victoria, at least in the eyes of his manager Alex Ferguson.

England's disastrous exit from the World Cup in 2006 was put down in part to the presence of the WAGs at the tournament. Victoria Beckham was in Germany along with fellow pop star Cheryl Cole and Coleen Rooney but they got more attention than the players in the press and were making front-page headlines. Rio Ferdinand later admitted it was a "circus" and it is a perception that many in the public still agree with.

Then again, things could always be more complicated. PSG striker Mauro Icardi is represented by his wife Wanda Nara. She was married to his Sampdoria teammate Maxi Lopez when they met and they married soon after the divorce was finalized. Nara took Icardi to Inter Milan, where he was twice snubbed by Lopez when their teams met, and now has overseen his move to PSG - a loan deal after new boss Antonio Conte made it clear he did not want Icardi at the club. The fallout from these fallouts still rumbles on and it appears to have cost one of the best strikers in Europe his international career.