When Euro 2024 kicked off, hope wasn’t exactly high for our beloved England boys.
From Gareth Southgate’s dubious lineup decisions to our entirely preventable loss against Iceland in a pre-tournament friendly, everything was looking a bit dire. The feverish force of the previous Euros had been snuffed out by the World Cup. Morale was low, even for England. There was nothing to latch on to. No real momentum or sense of national identity.
Until a mysterious figure appeared in the stands: Tolami Benson, girlfriend of Bukayo Saka, wearing a custom Three Lions branded motorcycle jacket with 87 — Saka’s Arsenal academy number — emblazoned on the back. It was chic, glamorous, and just that little bit on the nose. A trio of energies so inextricably linked to… WAGs.
Benson’s presence at Euro 2024 has commanded as much social media attention as any football-related England moment this tournament, apart from Jude Bellingham’s lifesaving bicycle kick.
As well as Benson, there is also Love Island alum Dani Dyer (dating right winger Jarrod Bowen), Katie Bio (dating centre-forward Ivan Toney) and Aine May Kennedy (dating midfielder Conor Gallagher) lighting up Instagram with images of them enjoying the Euros, fit with red, white and royal blue outfits to match.
And now that England fans are tired of watching their so-called superstars passing it round the back over, and over, and over again, they’re looking to the stands for inspiration.
Plus, we love a WAG, don’t we? The 2006 World Cup, also known as the year that England’s “WAGs went wild” at the German base camp of Baden-Baden, feels a world away from the sanitised England team of today.
In case you forgot, back then we had Victoria Beckham, Cheryl Cole, Coleen Rooney, Abbey Clancy and Carly Zucker. Between them, they managed to fuel coke scandals, encourage 3am karaoke sessions, indulge in luxurious lobster lunches and foster more than a few cheating rumours.
Altogether, their outrageous tales of drinking, dancing on tables and sky-high hotel bills rocked the quiet German town and made far more headlines than the Three Lions’ performance on the pitch.
Meanwhile the current England squad are out on group bike rides or enduring guest performances by Ed Sheeran, like some sort of election campaign turned Make A Wish project.
Sure, Kyle Walker and Kieran Trippier are having some wobbles with their wives right now and that’s making the papers, but the 2006 WAGs were everywhere. They were so unstoppable that they took most of the blame for England’s poor performance at the tournament.
Sadly, this radical birth of WAG culture may also have facilitated its death. As such, we may never get to see this type of WAG again. “I think there are a few reasons why we're in a WAG-drought,” says WAG enthusiast and The Fence contributing editor Róisín Lannigan. “Firstly 'WAG' as a profession is a job rendered obsolete by the influencer industrial complex and the wave of girlboss feminism that came in between Baden-Baden and today. Today's WAGs have jobs of their own, as Instagram baddies or property developers, mainly.”
She continues: “It's also the case that footballers themselves are very different from the early noughties lads of Baden-Baden. They're very sensible and very controlled and if you never see them falling out of nightclubs, naturally you're not going to see their girlfriends doing it either. Social media has reduced the power of paparazzi, and fashion has changed too. Quiet luxury has overtaken logomania. It's all very boring and bad for WAG heads I fear.”
But at least Tolami Benson and the other WAGs has given us a sliver of… something. Quiet luxury may be prevailing, but the response to Benson’s Three Lions motorbike jacket proved we have a desire for things to get a little louder. Certainly louder than England’s on-pitch performance, which has been so depressing it makes the hype-up advertising between breaks seem laughable.
Though Tolami Benson may never be a WAG in the way we want her to be — all oversized sunglasses, Birkin bags, and sex scandals — she does represent a change. “She hasn’t so much resurrected the genre but redefined it to suit her own image,” Lannigan notes.
Perhaps a new sort of WAG is on the way. And unless England’s players get their head in the game, Tolami Benson ushering in this arrival will remain the most exciting part of Euro 2024.
