It was a classic World Cup performance. Get into the area, eye on the target and then wham — straight into the back of the till. “The England squad’s wives and girlfriends kicked off their World Cup shopping campaign yesterday with a £5,000 spree,” The Sun reported last week.

“Wayne Rooney’s fiancée Coleen McLoughlin led the beauties’ dazzling attack on Baden Baden’s designer stores. She showed her brilliant credit card skills by blowing £900 in just 10 minutes on Gucci, Dior, and Dolce and Gabbana shoes, shirts and blouses.”

There had been fears that Coleen would be unable to shop — at least during the early stages of the tournament — after sustaining a pin number injury at the Arndale centre, Manchester.

The German combined chambers of commerce wanted to see her back behind the credit card as soon as possible, but British boutiques warned that she might never carry heavy bags again if she were forced into a sales situation before being fully match-fit.

The problem for the England team is that without Coleen the wives and girlfriends lack that creative spark. When Abigail Clancy, girlfriend of striker Peter Crouch, went out shopping on the same day she returned with nothing but a newspaper. The fans are never going to get behind a performance like that. And there are fears that Mel Slade, girlfriend of 17-year-old Theo Walcott, might have been brought into the team too early. According to The Sun, she ducked out of the shopping and played golf instead.

Even Big Brother is getting into the spirit of the football. The trouble is: it’s Italian football. Big Brother is reeling from allegations of match-fixing after a 43-year-old stripper won a place in the house in a prize draw.

“Telly watchdogs were last night probing claims that Susie Verrico’s entry into Big Brother is a fix — as The Sun suspects,” the paper raged. The producers of the Channel 4 show say Susie and her husband Cosmo waded through thousands of KitKat wrappers in search of one of 100 tickets for the draw. “But we can reveal Cosmo bought Susie’s ticket for £4,000 on eBay,” said The Sun.

The paper says the stripper is known to four of the current housemates, and has been trying to get on Big Brother for years: she has auditioned three times before and once spent time as a “guinea pig” contestant for a rehearsal of the show. But a spokesman for Big Brother insisted: “There is absolutely no truth in rumours that the draw was a fix.”