Coleen Rooney with son Kai in 2013.

Scott Heppell / AP

D.C. United ended its last game in a 0-0 draw on Sunday, seen as a disappointing end to the team’s regular season ahead of the playoffs. You know what’s not disappointing? The drama unleashed by player Wayne Rooney’s wife, Coleen Rooney, on Wednesday. A former British TV presenter and mother of four, Coleen Rooney released the first episode of what I’m calling The Real Housewives of D.C. Redux, detailing how she trapped a mole who’d been leaking stories about her to the press.

It all started in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, with an Instagram post from Coleen Rooney’s account bearing a screenshot-ed text field (not quite in notes app apology-style, but close). “This has been a burden in my life for a few years now and finally I have got to the bottom of it…” Rooney captioned the image, which she also shared on Twitter.

With the intensity of a detective detailing how she solved the crime at the end of a mystery movie, Rooney explains that she suspected a certain Instagram follower of hers was leaking stories about her to Britain’s The Sun newspaper. “There has been so much information given to [The Sun] about me, my friends, and my family—all without my permission or knowledge,” she laments.

In order to expose her mole, Rooney writes, she blocked all of her Instagram followers from viewing her stories, except for the suspected leaker. Then she fed it some false news as a test: She would know her suspect was guilty if the fake stories appeared in The Sun. “And you know what, they did!” Rooney writes, explaining which are fake: “The story about gender selection in Mexico, the story about returning to TV, and then the latest story about the basement flooding in my new house.”

Now, our modern day Agatha Christie continues, she knows who’s responsible for leaking the stories, and she has saved proof. “It’s ……….Rebekah Vardy’s account,” she writes. (Those ten ellipses, I’m delighted to note, are Rooney’s emphasis, not mine.)

Vardy might be even less familiar to American audiences than Coleen Rooney: She’s the wife of Jamie Vardy, who played on England’s national football team alongside Rooney and for the Premier League club Leicester City. Rebekah Vardy and her husband, who have two children together and three from previous relationships, married in 2016, after which she appeared on Britain’s version of I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! (She came in ninth place.)

Shortly after Rooney’s accusation, Vardy responded on social media, denying that she’d leaked news and indicating that she had called Rooney about the mess. “Over the years various people have had access to my insta & just this week I found I was following people I didn’t know and have never followed myself.” Vardy also objected to Rooney publicly airing her grievances “especially when I’m heavily pregnant.”

In the caption of her Instagram post, Vardy noted that she’s seeking “legal advice.” As writer Nicole Cliffe pointed out on Twitter, Rooney’s initial statement carefully accused “Rebekah Vardy’s account” of viewing the stories, not Vardy herself.

https://twitter.com/Nicole_Cliffe/status/1181936103869173760

The Sun stories that Coleen Rooney claims are fabricated were published between August and October of this year, and while all still appear online, the timestamps indicate they were updated on Wednesday morning. In August, The Sun reported that Coleen Rooney traveled to Mexico to research “gender selection” treatment to have a fifth child. The following month, the outlet published a story claiming she was planning to revive her TV career with her own fashion show and an appearance on Britain’s popular reality show Strictly Come Dancing. And on Tuesday, the site claimed a storm flooded the basement of their English mansion. Like most celebrity content, the stories each cite an unnamed “source.”

In The Sun’s own story about the leak brouhaha on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the site says, ” Like all reputable media organizations, we don’t comment on sources.” The Sun, meanwhile, is one of the three media organizations currently being sued by Prince Harry of England, who claims they hacked his and wife Meghan Markle’s voicemail messages.

Understandably, Twitter has gone fully berserk for this drama, responding with plenty of memes. Google reported that searches for Rebekah Vardy in the U.K. outpaced searches for Brexit on Wednesday. Wikipedia’s goof editors were tripping over each other trying to amend Coleen Rooney’s page this morning:

Unfortunately our latest local gossip fixation won’t be local for too much longer. Wayne Rooney is leaving D.C. United at the end of the season, saying in his announcement earlier this summer that he and his family “wanted to be closer to the ones we love back in England.” After he joined the team last year—becoming the team’s highest paid player—the couple and their four children settled in Bethesda, where at least one of their sons plays on a local soccer team.

Meanwhile, D.C. United next plays on Oct. 19 in Toronto, when they begin the playoffs. Coleen’s husband will presumably be playing.

Filed Under: coleen rooney, d.c. united, Wayne Rooney,