Coleen McLoughlin - Welcome to My World

It was floating in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, not far from the beaches of St Tropez, only a couple of days away from going back home to Liverpool, that I decided to start writing this book. I wanted to put down on paper what the last four years have really been like – never mind what you read in the newspapers and the pages of magazines. Because everyone I meet asks me the same question: What has it been like, going from that sixteen-year-old schoolgirl in the lower sixth at St John Bosco High School in Croxteth to the amazing life I’m fortunate to live now? ‘That must be an unbelievable feeling,’ they say. ‘What does that big change feel like?’

That’s what I’m always asked, and I have never really answered before. Not what it’s honestly been like. Not how it feels deep down to be this ordinary Liverpool girl who, all of a sudden, found myself in the spotlight. Then living this dream, because sometimes it still feels like a dream: appearing in magazines like Vogue and Marie Claire ; waking up to find myself on the front page of the Sun and the Daily Mirror because the day before I’d been out shopping ( shopping! ); the paparazzi following my every move; columnists from all the different nationals talking about me like they know me. It’s a good and bad dream, with the good thankfully outweighing the rest.

This book starts on holiday, after the World Cup in Germany and Baden-Baden, because for the previous month or so it had felt like the so-called WAGs, including me, had been in the newspapers every day, and the life I’d been living for the past four years, all the brilliant things that had happened, had been squeezed into just a few weeks.

Germany had been crazy. All the press attention surrounding the WAGs was unbelievable. The WAGs? I don’t even like that label and here I am using it. That’s the power of the media. I don’t know which newspaper came up with the name in the beginning but it just seems to me like a sneery way of describing all the England footballers’ wives and partners. So, from here on in, this is a WAG-free zone! Anyway, back to Germany…People said afterwards that we must be pleased because of the amount of coverage we got, but none of us ever asked for it. Admittedly, some of the girls enjoyed it, but others didn’t. I don’t know…it was such a weird one, but I don’t think we deserved that much attention. The newspapers went over the top, following our every move, detailing how much we were spending, how much we were drinking, the fashion wars. They said there were divides, that there was a competition to see how many column inches each of us could get. Fair enough, some were more interested in that kind of thing than others, but there were never any problems between the girls. Loads of the wives and girlfriends have got kids, so that hinders everyone from all going out together at once.

The fact is, like in any walk of life, you get on better with some people than you do with others. I get on well with Steven Gerrard’s wife, Alex, and I think that’s because we both come from Liverpool and we have loads in common – but it’s also because the first time I ever went away with England, before the Euros in Portugal in 2004, she was the first girlfriend I met properly and got on well with. I’m friends with Jamie Carragher’s wife, Nicola, as well, who’s also from Liverpool.

Who else did I get on with? Elen, Frank Lampard’s girlfriend, I got on really well with her. They’ve got a little girl, but she had a nanny so Elen could do a lot more than some of the other mothers. Elen is Spanish but also speaks fluent English – however, sometimes she didn’t understand everyone’s accents and just laughed at us.

Then there was Cheryl. Cheryl Tweedy (well, it’s Cheryl Cole now). I’d met her at another match a while back but this was her first trip away with the team. A few months before, I’d actually been to see Girls Aloud perform in Manchester and she’d invited us – me, my friend and my cousin – backstage afterwards. She’s so funny and has a great sense of humour.

The first time I met Cheryl we were in a box watching one of the England matches. There was me, Victoria Beckham, Paul Robinson’s wife Rebecca, and then Cheryl came in all on her own. Victoria saw her and asked her to come and sit with us. People don’t appreciate how hard it is to go to a match for the first time when everyone’s in little groups and seems to know one other. It’s intimidating.

Before the Euros in Portugal in 2004 we had all gone to La Manga in Spain for the build-up to the tournament. I was seventeen years old, and I hadn’t flown out with the rest of the wives and girlfriends because I’d had to stay behind in Liverpool to sit my AS exams. So when I arrived Wayne met me at the hotel, helped me take my stuff up to the room and then we went down to the pool. I’d never met any of the girls before, didn’t know who anyone was, and Wayne turned round and said, ‘Oh, I’m going off to play golf now.’ I didn’t know anyone, so I said, ‘You can’t do that!’ So Wayne pointed to a group of people lying round the swimming pool and said, ‘’Ere y’are, go and sit with them over there.’

There were two girls with their boyfriends: one of the couples was the Chelsea footballer Wayne Bridge and his girlfriend, and the other was Everton’s James Beattie and his partner. My Wayne went off to play golf for hours and I went over to sit with these people without having a clue what to say. I didn’t even know their names. I ended up asking stuff like what day had they turned up at the hotel, even though I knew exactly when they’d arrived – with everyone else! So it’s hard when you’re the new girl.

During the World Cup the newspapers made out Cheryl didn’t mix with the rest of us and she and Victoria hung out on their own together all the time, but that wasn’t the way it was. She might not have come out in the evening all the time but we met up and went out for lunch and she’s a lovely girl. Victoria was criticized in the same way. There were headlines saying how she never mixed with anyone. But she was with us in the hotel, and travelled on the coach to matches with us all and the families. We had a great dinner one night, when my best friend Claire came along, but the press don’t really want to report that kind of thing. It makes a better story to say there were divisions in the camp.

After the World Cup was all over, the newspapers used us, the wives and girlfriends, as an excuse as to why the team didn’t get any further. But that’s all it was, an excuse. If England had won the World Cup they would have said that having the wives and girlfriends over in Germany was a good thing. But, let’s be honest, the families haven’t been allowed to travel with the England team in the past and I can understand if it’s true that the FA will not in future be making official arrangements for the girls. But before we start blaming anyone, let’s be clear. We’ve only won the World Cup once and that was in 1966 when we had home advantage. Why were we in the papers so much? It’s not that we asked for the attention. If you think about it this was the first World Cup played out in the digital age and the era of celeb-obsessed media. It was a European tournament, only two hours ahead of England, and the photographers with their state-of-the-art technology had no problems meeting their editors’ deadlines. From day one, the newspapers decided we were the other story and were going to turn us into headline news whether we liked it or not. As far as the press were concerned the girls were seen as fair game for criticism and sometimes ridicule, and, in the end, easy to blame for England failing to win the tournament.