Rebekah Vardy’s Fresh Start: New Friends, Style Changes, and a Real Snub

Gone were her usual super-cropped denim shorts and cleavage-revealing tank tops, replaced instead with a simple beige trench coat.

This was Rebekah Vardy, smiling dutifully, her thick hair extensions sensibly tied back into a ponytail, as her footballer husband Jamie signed a surprise new deal to play for a little-known Italian side, Cremonese.

While underneath Rebekah’s mac a £720 cream Prada vest could be spotted, her usual bold, some might say garish, fashion choices appeared to be a thing of the past. Perhaps it reflects the turning of a new leaf for Britain’s most talked-about WAG.

For Jamie Vardy’s new home is the historic Cremona in Lombardy, most famous for making violins. All cobbled streets, elegant Michelin starred restaurants and classical music, its centre is marked by a stunning Gothic cathedral and bell tower. Elegant squares dot the city. Leicester, it is not.

More significantly, perhaps, is the fact that Jamie’s new club are relative minnows compared to some of the clubs the couple were hoping to land a berth in.

Recently promoted to Italy’s Serie A, Cremonese are hoping to avoid being instantly relegated, as they have been on six of the eight occasions they previously made it to the top flight.

All of which, naturally, means less money for the Vardys.

This could be part of the reason that their trip to Italy, like Rebekah’s fashion choices, was relatively understated – which, to be frank, is not a word usually associated with the former nightclub hostess, who has her own range of Skittle-flavoured vodkas.

And so, after 38-year-old Jamie put pen to paper on his new deal – reportedly worth £860,000 per year, which would make it almost ten times less than his annual income at Leicester – rather than celebrating in style, the couple popped off to visit a violin museum.

Without wishing to cast aspersions, one might reasonably imagine that this was the first time the Vardys had been to such an institution.

Cremona is famed for its musical traditions, being the birthplace of Antonio Stradivari, the legendary Italian violin maker.

At the museum, Jamie, slightly wide-eyed, posed next to a selection of violins and cellos, dressed in his new team’s colours. In one video, posted on his Instagram, he is seen larking around as he gives Rebekah a piggy back beside a priceless violin housed in a glass cabinet.

Regardless of his lack of musical credentials, Jamie has already been nicknamed ‘StradiVardy’ – a nod to honour both him and Cremona’s musical heritage.

The couple’s trip, I’m told, was to embrace the local people and begin to integrate.

They arrived on a private jet at Milan’s Linate airport – some 50 miles away – where Jamie was heralded by an excitable pack of the team’s devoted fans who chanted ‘Take us to Europe’ as he signed autographs and posed for photographs.

For once, Rebekah didn’t overshadow Jamie as she has in the past – most notoriously with the humiliating, not to mention costly, Wagatha Christie high court showdown.

‘She smiled nicely and let Jamie get on with it,’ says a source.

Where her long-suffering husband would end up playing this season was one of the summer transfer window’s most speculated moves after his big money contract at Leicester expired.

Both he and Rebekah desperately need a fresh start. For Jamie, this was a chance to finish his career on a high – and boost his bank balance for a final few seasons before retirement called. For Rebekah, a new club posed an opportunity to slide into a new social circle.

Those who know Rebekah, however, say that a deal with Cremonese was not what she hoped her husband’s career swansong would be.

Instead, she was dreaming of a more glamorous, well-known team – especially as Jamie’s move is likely to be featured in her forthcoming Netflix fly-on-the-wall documentary.

Just a few weeks ago she posted pictures on social media of her children dressed in Inter Miami replica kits – prompting much amusement for the team, which is owned by David Beckham.

‘No way would we sign [Vardy],’ a club executive told me. ‘No one at Inter Miami will have heard of him. They just signed Rodrigo de Paul who won the World Cup with Argentina. They don’t sign people at the end of their career.

‘Nice of them to buy the kits though.’ Ouch.

Rebekah’s many critics thought perhaps she may have been ‘manifesting’ Jamie’s next move. And indeed, friends of hers told me she felt sure Jamie would be snapped up by a top US team, such as Inter Miami or LA Galaxy.

She would also, they say, have been happy with Jamie moving to the star-studded Championship club Wrexham in the hope that she could buddy up with actress Blake Lively, whose husband Ryan Reynolds is the co-owner.

There was even chatter of Jamie moving to Birmingham City which is owned by US superstar and former American footballer Tom Brady.

‘Becky desperately wanted a glamorous big move to a really glitzy club. She had dreamed of Inter Miami, hanging out with Victoria Beckham would be like a dream for her,’ says one source who knows her.

‘The Miami lifestyle – nightclubs, celebrities, parties – is way more her. Cremona, though, is all crumbling old buildings and culture.

‘The locals are beautiful, elegant, it’s all incredibly stylish – but there’s no showbiz glamour, no nightlife, no celebrity scene at all.

‘Becky is used to the limelight, but nobody in Cremona will have the first idea who she is.’

They know her husband though – the Italian press say that Cremonese fans are ‘crazy about him’ and that they already ‘love him’.

A few have even had Jamie’s name tattooed on their bodies, while local reporters have hailed his signing as ‘incredible and beautiful.’

Praising his glorious career in the UK, they say he has become a ‘symbol of determination and sacrifice’ and a ‘hero’, as Cremonese face a fight to remain in Serie A.

And so, Jamie is already being dubbed ‘the king’. His impact at the club is likely to be immediate – both on and off the field – despite being in the twilight phase of his career.

The former England international is by far the most recognisable name on the squad’s team sheet – although fellow newcomer Romano Mussolini also commands attention thanks to sharing a surname with his great grandfather, former Italian dictator and wartime leader Benito Mussolini.

While sources close to Rebekah say the Vardys are unsure yet whether they will move to Cremona, as his contract is just for a year, she will absolutely be a regular at Cremonese’s 21,000 seater Stadio Giovanni Zini alongside a raft of stylish Italian partners of the club’s first team.

 For now, the Italian press have yet to catch onto the Wagatha Christie saga. One wonders what they will make of the storm that followed the revelations which began in October 2019 after Coleen Rooney suspected posts from her private Instagram account were being leaked to the Sun newspaper.

Subsequent detective work which saw her block all of her followers from seeing her posts apart from Rebekah, led to Coleen, of course, announcing on social media that her co-WAG was the culprit.

Rebekah sued for libel – and lost. After a judge ruled the accusation was ‘substantially true’, Rebekah was ordered to pay over £1.4million of Rooney’s legal costs, not to mention her own hefty legal bill.

So far though, the Italian newspapers have only mentioned 43-year-old Rebekah in relation to her wedding, which Jamie’s parents did not attend because they disapproved of her.

As for her fellow WAGs, Rebekah is yet to meet them.

Among the most glamorous is Marika D’Angelo, girlfriend of Jamie’s new defender pal Federico Baschirotto, described by some media outlets as the most handsome man in Italian football.

Boasting 25,000 followers on Instagram, Marika, a model, has plenty of admirers thanks to her exemplary fashion sense, and photographs of herself modelling bikinis.

Also in the Cremonese set is blonde bombshell Federica Boccardo, partner of goalkeeper Emil Audero, a cool self-styled rock chick with heavy tattoos who works in the beauty industry.

Then there is beautiful Valentina Guglielmetti, girlfriend of 26-year-old Alessio Zerbin. An interior designer, Valentina graduated from the prestigious European Institute of Design in Milan in 2023.

And Alessia Gamba, fiancee of midfielder Michele Collocolo, 25, is most commonly seen in high fashion outfits and regularly posts luxurious snaps of the stunning hotels, beaches and restaurants she favours.

As one source quipped: ‘Becky might have to rethink her style somewhat if she’s going to fit in with the Italian WAGs. They’re not about garish designer labels and sports gear.

‘But most of them also speak fluent English so there’s a chance for her to mingle and make a whole new circle of friends if she can pull it off.

‘There will obviously be some hope that none of them will ever have heard of Wagatha Christie. It’s a totally fresh start… if she can just keep her head down and stay out of trouble.’

Much rides on this Cremonese move, not least because the Vardys have taken a huge financial blow in recent years, as a result of Rebekah’s legal defeat to Coleen Rooney. While it meant they were forced to put their beloved Portuguese holiday villa on the market for a hefty £9.7million earlier this year, their lifestyles remain expensive.

Home is a sprawling mansion just outside Grantham, Lincolnshire, which boasts a bar, gym and a huge play area for their five children. They also have an ever-revolving fleet of Range Rovers.

Holidays are also an extremely regular occurrence – this year alone, they enjoyed a ski trip to Val d’Isere, a lavish £7,000-a-night getaway at the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui and a luxurious trip to Portugal.

Previously, Jamie is thought to have earned £140,000 a week at Leicester but most of Italy’s professionals earn considerably less than their Premier League counterparts, and the average Serie A player takes home around £27,500 per week.

There had been hope of a move to Spanish side Girona with the La Liga team’s sponsors prepared to pay for the striker’s wages.

But the signing was vetoed by Premier League legend Patrick Vieira, the team’s manager, who made it clear that Jamie didn’t fit into his plans, sparking speculation he may have been put off signing him by the unwelcome distraction of the inevitable family circus which accompanies him.

As one football insider explained: ‘Girona is a much bigger proposition [than Cremonese] – but Vieira blocked it. Even though the sponsors were going to pick up the costs, he just didn’t seem interested.

‘It’s a real snub – saying you don’t want someone even though they’re not going to cost you anything.

‘You can’t help wonder if he was aware of the extra mess that having Becky in the wings might have brought with it. Within football the whole thing is obviously a massive embarrassment, and a lot of people really respect Wayne and Coleen Rooney.

‘Wagatha has certainly followed them around and hopefully they can shake that off for good in Cremona – but there is no way those Italian WAGs won’t be googling Rebekah’s name.’