‘WAG of the Year’: Euros’ frenzy over Bukayo Saka’s girlfriend, Tolami Benson

As England prepares its upcoming Euros’ final showdown against Spain, one unlikely figure has “stolen the show”.

The eyes of football fans across the globe will be trained on Berlin early Monday morning, when Spain and England battle it out in the UEFA European Football Championship final.

But if the headlines on a spate of publications are anything to go by, the latter team’s players aren’t the only ones worth watching.

Instead, it’s Tolami Benson, the girlfriend of beloved Arsenal and England right winger Bukayo Saka, who has “stolen the show” – albeit from the stands – since the country’s opening game of the tournament.

Much has been made of the 23-year-old in recent weeks. Vogue credited her with “reviving WAG fever”, Harper’s Bazaar labelled her “the real winner of the Euros”, and she’s been crowned “WAG of the Year” by her 170,000-strong Instagram following.

“Benson’s back must be sore by effectively carrying the intrigue of the Euros all on her own,” the Harper’s Bazaar piece read, adding she “stands front and centre of a new generation of wives and girlfriends”.

The article went on to praise Benson – who works as a senior planning executive for Zenith, specialising in beauty public relations – for “continuing to prioritise her own work and maintain normalcy in a world so far out of reach for so many”, rather than capitalise on Saka’s success.

Bukayo Saka of England celebrates scoring the team's third penalty in the penalty shoot out during the UEFA EURO 2024 quarter-final match between England and Switzerland. Picture: Richard Pelham/Getty Images

Tolami Benson, the girlfriend of beloved Arsenal and England right winger Bukayo Saka. Picture: Instagram

It’s this aspect that Benson has been seemingly celebrated the most.

Despite her and Saka being one of the most talked-about couples of the Euros 2024, their relationship is completely off the radar (at least where social media is concerned).

Benson has never spoken publicly about her four-year relationship, nor do she and Saka follow each other on Instagram.

Benson has never spoken publicly about her four-year relationship with Saka. Picture: Instagram

The couple also don’t follow each other on social media. Picture: Instagram

Her subdued approach is a far cry from the frenzied heyday of the early aughts WAG – when the likes of Victoria Beckham, Cheryl Cole and Coleen Rooney were almost a bigger publicity draw than their football-playing counterparts.

In the almost two decades since, there’s been a reckoning with the label itself, steeped as it is in a history of misogyny, and its primary use: to reduce the female partners of male athletes to nothing more than their cheerleaders.

Society also, writer Hanna Lustig suggested in a piece for Glamour last October, might be “finally coming around to the idea that WAGs provide something priceless to the players and teams they represent: relevancy”.

“After all, no one gets to play ball forever,” Lustig wrote.

“In some ways, the best thing a professional athlete can do for their career (and the longevity of it) is have a partner who can stand in the spotlight with rather than behind them; someone whose intrigue and influence bolsters their own.”

Victoria Beckham during the World Cup 2006 quarter-final between England and Portugal. Picture: AFP Photo/DDP/Jochen Luebke

US tennis player Taylor Fritz and his girlfriend, Morgan Riddle. Picture: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

This has been especially prescient in tennis, where the great WAG reclamation has been led by fashion influencer Morgan Riddle – the partner of American player Taylor Fritz who The New York Times deemed “the most famous woman in men’s tennis”.

Riddle, who has dated Fritz for almost four years, has amassed a following of 336,000 on Instagram and more than 517,000 on TikTok, where she predominantly shares the outfits she wears to Fritz’s matches.

The 26-year-old has been credited with bringing an entirely new audience to the sport.

“I cover the younger generation, the teenage girl fans of tennis because I think tennis, media and the sport in general underestimate how many of them there are,” Riddle told The Age while in Melbourne with Fritz for this year’s Australian Open.

“I realised there was a gap in this content market. There are a lot of content creators focusing on the sport of tennis, the scores, the players and the guy with the great backhand.

“But 50 per cent of tennis fans are women. They love that part of it, but they love everything else around it too. They want to see the outfits, the travel, the lifestyle.”