Wayne Rooney spoke to Jamie Vardy about Rebekah Vardy’s “media activities” during the Euro 2016 tournament because they were “causing problems and distractions”.
The former England player, who captained the national team during Euro 2016, said in a witness statement prepared as part of Mrs Vardy’s libel claim against his wife Coleen Rooney that he was asked by a member of Football Association staff to speak to Mr Vardy.
He said: “I remember getting pulled to one side by a member of the FA staff.
“I was asked to speak to my teammate Jamie Vardy about the fact that Becky’s media activities were causing problems and distractions which the FA wanted to avoid.
“I think Becky had some kind of column in The Sun about Euro 2016. I obviously had bigger things to focus upon at the time, but I agreed to speak to Jamie because it was easier than pushing back against the FA.
“I relayed to Jamie what I had been told by the FA and Jamie said he would speak to Becky about it.
“I was then asked during a press conference about the fact that I had spoken to Jamie about Becky’s media activities.
“I did not see the article, but apparently there had been a story in The Sun about my conversation with Jamie about Becky.
“The issue didn’t go any further than that.”
Mr Rooney also said he had no idea about his wife’s sting operation to find the person behind leaks from her private Instagram account until after she published the post in which she claimed it was Mrs Vardy’s account in October 2019.
However, he said Mrs Rooney did tell him she suspected Mrs Vardy in the months before the reveal post.
He said: “During 2017, I recall Coleen being really frustrated that posts/stories that she had uploaded to her private Instagram account were being leaked to The Sun.
“Whilst it was obviously upsetting Coleen, I didn’t want to get involved. I don’t read the press, particularly The Sun, and I have never been particularly active on social media – or at least I wasn’t active on social media at the time.
“Coleen keeps a lot to herself and I just didn’t pay much attention to the matter at all.
“In around January 2019, whilst we were living in the US, I recall Coleen again being distressed about the fact that private information that she had uploaded to her private Instagram account was being leaked to The Sun.
“I remember she uploaded something on Twitter to make it clear that she was aware of what was happening and that she was unhappy about it.
“I think it was around this time that Coleen had mentioned to me that she thought it could be Becky.
“Again, being the person that I am, I didn’t pay a massive amount of attention to it, but I hoped that the leaks would stop now that Coleen had gone public and that would be the end of the matter.
“I didn’t speak to anyone else about the fact that Coleen suspected it was Becky.
“I now understand that Coleen uploaded various fake posts, including one about gender selection, one about returning to TV and one about our basement flooding, all of which were false, all of which were accessible only by Becky’s Instagram account and all of which appeared in The Sun.
“I had no idea about any of that until Coleen uploaded her post on [the] 9th October 2019.
“I don’t read the papers or online articles and whilst I am on social media, I am not particularly active and certainly wouldn’t monitor Coleen’s private Instagram account or speak with her about content she had been uploading.
“I don’t even think Coleen and I discussed the specific articles as they appeared in The Sun.
“Coleen didn’t even mention to me that she was going to upload her post prior to it being published on [the] 9th October 2019.
“I was in the US at the time the post was uploaded, the time zone is around four or five hours behind the UK.
“Had I known what Coleen was up to in terms of trying to catch Becky out and making it all public then, irrespective of whether it would have changed her mind, I would have spoken with Paul Stretford (Mr Rooney’s adviser) about it to get his view.
“The fact that I never spoke to Paul about the matter demonstrates my very limited knowledge and involvement.”
