Those 'monster' WAGs just had to be stopped

It's gutting to look back on the 2006 World Cup finals as my last international competition, a tournament that will always be remembered more for the wives and girlfriends than football.

How we allowed the WAGs stories to dominate I will never understand.

It was the one farcical issue of Sven’s reign.

Distraction: Gary Neville believes the WAGs got in the way of the football

What people overlooked was that this situation had been brewing in 2004. WAGs had been regular visitors to the team hotel in Portugal. If it was a minor irritation then, it had grown into a monster by 2006.

The whole issue of celebrity wives was something I couldn’t get my head around. There were people who saw a tournament not as a series of matches but as a photo opportunity.

The more I saw, the more annoyed I became that my own family were there. I made them aware of my concerns, and my reservations about the motives of quite a few of the travelling party.

As the manager, Sven had to take the blame for allowing this situation to get out of hand. But it didn’t say much for the players, or their families, that it had gone so far. It’s hard enough playing for England without distractions.