NOTHING brings the country together like football.
But there are some people who have more than a little insight into the game and the hype surrounding it – the WAGs.
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Belinda Coleman was also once one of them, having a front row seat to all the money, the pleasures – and pitfalls – of life as a Premier League wife.
She was the spouse of the Welsh football coach Chris Coleman – but in 2011, their 19-year relationship came to a bitter end following cheating accusations.
The divorce ended in Chris, now 55, giving Belinda just two months to leave the two bedroom flat she shared with their four kids, Sonny, Christy, Faraday and Georgie – all whilst he planned his marriage to blonde TV presenter Charlotte Jackson.
Belinda previously lifted the lid on how their dream marriage turned into a nightmare – and how his flings led to their split after 19 years together.
Belinda then said. “He’s an adulterer and I just became bored of his indiscretions.
“His affairs were into double figures. And I’d even confronted three or four of the women. I never ranted at them. I just told them they weren’t the first and they wouldn’t be the last.
“And I told him if he wanted to be with them, he should just walk out and leave us alone to get on with our lives.”
Now, over a decade later, Belinda has revealed what life is like when your millionaire marriage ends, the money disappears, and you go from the A-list lifestyle to having the bailiffs at your door.
By 1991, when she met Chris, then a player with Crystal Palace, Belinda owned a flat of her own and was managing a hotel health club.
“I’d been invited to a match by a player who’d come to the health club for physiotherapy. The first time I spoke to Chris in the lounge after the match it was so natural. I had no idea this man would change my life forever,” Belinda told The Telegraph.
Just six months later the pair tied the knot – and according to Belinda, it felt like a fairy tale.
As Chris’ career began to climb, they went from a two-bedroom rental to purchasing a small house before Chris moved to Blackburn – ”and suddenly, there was so much money”, Belinda said.
There were luxurious holidays, shopping sprees galore and private school education for their four kids.
“I decorated our lovely home in the country, called the Old Stables, with all the top-of-the-range equipment I could find.”
But with so much money coming in, there was no planning for their financial future – something Belinda looks back at now and cringes at how ”financially irresponsible” the two were.
Meet the WAGS of the England footballers
England Wags range from childhood sweethearts to recently blossoming love stories.
Katie Goodland (Harry Kane’s wife)
The fitness instructor has been married to the England captain since 2019 and joined him in Germany with their four children after he joined Bayern Munich.
Laura Celia Valk (Jude Bellingham’s girlfriend)
The stunning Dutch model, 25, has more than half a million Instagram followers and is said to be absolutely smitten with the Real Madrid star.
Rebecca Cooke (Phil Foden’s girlfriend)
Foden’s childhood sweetheart and the mother of his two kids tends to keep out of the spotlight, but is a regular at England games.
Dani Dyer (Jarrod Bowen’s girlfriend)
England’s most famous Wag, former Love Island winner and daughter of Eastenders’ Danny Dyer.
Iris Law (Trent Alexander-Arnold’s girlfriend)
Dani Dyer isn’t the only actor’s daughter dating an England star. Iris’ dad is Hollywood legend Jude Law.
Megan Davison (Jordan Pickford’s wife)
Megan has been with Pickford since he was 14 years old. The couple married in 2022 and have one son.
Olivia Naylor (John Stones’ girlfriend)
The 33-year-old former beautician has stepped back from her role after giving birth to a baby son.
Read more about the Wags supporting England at Euro 2024 here
“I couldn’t be sensible about it because I couldn’t bear to think about it. There was a lot of guilt at having money when people I loved didn’t, so spending it as quickly as I could on myself and others seemed to make sense.”
Of course, there was also the pressure to look the part, which came with a hefty price tag – the scrutiny of Premier League wives and girlfriends was intense.
There were amazing times together, she explained – the fun of supporting their men at their games, the lavish getaways abroad, the luxurious parties and the fun of watching their children grow together.
But the lifestyle also came with lots of troubles to share, such as woman ”falling over” their husbands, which ”took a huge psychological and emotional toll” on Belinda.
As rumours of Chris’s infidelity became louder, with headlines everywhere, the trust between the couple crumbled.
While Belinda was trying her best to pretend everything was okay for the sake of her children, it was just a mask – and in reality, she was losing her mind.
It eventually led the mother-of-four to do things that she wasn’t proud of, including hiring a private detective and hiding a tracker in Chris’s car – something, she now thinks, created ”suffering”.
As for why the separation and then divorce meant swapping a millionaire pad for a two-bed flat, Belinda is frank.
“Despite once having millions, the money had run out. It was my fault too, of course, but suddenly I was facing financial ruin.”
Bailiffs knocking on door
But the worst was yet to come.
One day, Belinda, now 60, heard loud banging at the door – it was two men who turned out to be bailiffs.
Paralysed with fear, she didn’t dare to move, and when the two finally left, she collapsed.
Following their visit, Belinda’s car was repossessed, and then an eviction notice arrived.
Eventually managing to find a private rental she could just about afford, this was the first of 11 forced moves in ten years for Belinda and the children, Sonny, now 32, Christy 30, Faraday, 27, and Georgie, 25.
While she did eventually receive spousal and child maintenance, the money was nothing compared to her previous lavish lifestyle and Belinda felt as if she ”was depriving the children of the life they’d become accustomed to”.
On one occasion, she remembers, her card was declined at the supermarket checkout, despite calculating everything in the trolley to the penny.
Now raising four kids as a single mum, Belinda took whatever jobs she could fit around their schedule, working nights, weekends and 12-hour shifts.
“I packed boxes for a removal company, worked in a call centre and cleaned. One day in 2016, a year after our divorce was finalised, I drove through the wrought-iron gates of the Old Stables. I was there to clean the house we’d once owned.
Standing in the beautiful home, the memories of the happy times came flooding back and Belinda realised just how much her life had changed.
But she refused to feel sorry for herself. Instead, she appreciated being alive and having four wonderful kids, friends and family who loved her.
Then in 2019, during yet another forced house move, she was packing a book – and things in her life were about to change.
The sentence read: ”Sometimes the universe is just waiting for you to say yes.’’
For Belinda, it was a sign – a sign that if she truly wanted something different in her life, she needed to do something different.
This was the start of Belinda’s journey with manifestation, journaling, meditating, visualisation and expressing gratitude daily that turned her life around – as did winning a legal case.
On a whim one day, the mum-of-four wrote herself a cheque for the amount she believed was achievable from an ongoing legal dispute, placing it beside her bed and acknowledging it every day.
In the end, she ended up winning that case against the odds, and the money meant she could finally achieve the dream of owning her very own home.
”The house I bought was listed for exactly the amount I’d written on the cheque.”
Now a qualified motivational coach and NLP (neuro-linguistic processing therapy) practitioner, Belinda has written a book about her journey.
Wag to Warrior, Every Woman’s Roadmap to Overcoming Life’s Challenges and Rewriting Her Story is a book that Belinda hopes will help other women who are struggling, including other WAGs.