The gentle melody of a piano floats through the open French doors of the Brenners Park Hotel, while elegant ladies with parasols gracefully navigate the beautifully landscaped gardens. The weather is mild, the air is refreshingly crisp, and the sun shines brightly above.

In Baden-Baden, a historic spa town perched on the brink of Germany’s Black Forest, life moves at a leisurely pace. As I unwind by the pool with a book after a busy day, the scene around me is one of tranquil charm. It’s hard to imagine a setting more serene.

Nearby, the only other sound is the delicate pouring of afternoon tea by waiters in immaculate white gloves.

It’s June 9, 2006, and my reason for being here is the World Cup. David Beckham and his teammates are stationed just a half-hour away, secluded in a mountaintop castle as they gear up for their first game.

Suddenly, the calm is broken by an exuberant chorus of lively greetings. The advance party of the England squad’s wives and girlfriends has made their grand entrance.

I watch as they gather on the hotel’s terrace, which offers a stunning view of Lichtentaler Allee, the sophisticated promenade once favored by Queen Victoria during an era when Baden-Baden was the summer capital of Europe.

There’s Wayne Rooney’s girlfriend Coleen McLoughlin, who has not long turned 20, and Gary Neville’s 23-year-old fiancée Emma Hadfield and Alex Curran, 23, engaged to Steven Gerrard. (Alex, incidentally, is a grandmother now.)

Others arrive to more shrieks. After drinks and snacks they are soon pool-bound. There is much excited chatter. The noise gets nearer, building rapidly like the rush of a 747 engine before take-off. Suddenly I am surrounded by WAGs. 

A lucky man in many respects, you might think, but any lone male who has stumbled unwittingly into the middle of a hen party might recognise my feeling of discomfiture. No doubt the Germans have an even longer word for it.

But I needn’t have worried. Coleen and co are charming. They are straightforward, down-to-earth women who, they tell me, are simply ‘on holiday and supporting the boys’. They express an unshakeable belief that this time England will triumph. Then they settle down to a spot of sunbathing.

Elen Rivas, Frank Lampard’s then fiancée, is the only one reading and, as we are sun-lounger neighbours, we strike up a conversation about books. Around us, the others swap stories about their journeys. 

‘Where’s Victoria?’ someone enquires, referring to Mrs Beckham, undisputed WAG queen. Shrugs all round. (Though we didn’t know it, Posh Spice’s scheduled flight had been cancelled because of an engine fault, and she had had to hire a private jet.)

Meanwhile a small group of photographers have gathered beyond the River Oos on the edge of the hotel grounds and are training their long lenses on us. Well, not on me exactly. Still, I slowly shake my head in mock annoyance and instinctively draw my stomach in, secretly hoping they’ll get my best side. None of the WAGs seems too bothered by the cameras.

It has been said the WAG phenomena started in Baden Baden in 2006 though the acronym had been around a while. Many were familiar with their champagne- and-shopping lifestyle from the reality TV show Footballers’ Wives, which first aired four years earlier. The WAGs already had one Louboutin-shod foot in the nation’s consciousness. But what happened 20 years ago this month elevated things to a whole new level.

When I left the wives and girlfriends by the pool, the cocktail hour pianist was playing Ain’t Misbehavin’. And the WAGs weren’t misbehaving. Not then, anyway.

The accepted narrative would later be that they spent their time boozing and dancing on tables by night and hitting the designer boutiques by day. Yet I can report that it wasn’t exactly like that. Even if it was, did the WAGs deserve the sniffy criticism that came their way? They weren’t role models. Why shouldn’t they enjoy themselves? Really, wasn’t this a big fuss about nothing much?

England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson didn’t think so. He spoke of the attention surrounding the WAGs as being a ‘distraction’ to his players. Was their mental resolve so shaky that the spectacle of their partners out on the town risked putting them off their stride? No wonder we struggle with penalties. After all, it wasn’t as if the WAGs were cavorting with strapping lads in lederhosen.

As for the rest of us, a distraction is sometimes exactly what’s needed during an England game (and before and after, for that matter). That Friday afternoon, however, magic and hope still filled the air. The WAGs had yet to set foot in Garibaldi’s, the bar and restaurant that became their favourite watering hole. In any case, at this stage nobody knew they were about to face such scrutiny.

It’s largely forgotten now but from a news perspective – and I was working as a news rather than sports reporter in Germany – the spectre of hooliganism was the big pre-tournament talking point. Thugs from all over Europe were supposedly on their way, among them Polish neo-Nazis. And, of course, our own troublemakers weren’t likely to miss the chance of a scrap despite banning orders. Some were planning to fly in by helicopter. In the event it never happened, one of the reasons why the WAGs were pushed centre stage.

Then there was the fact of our old foe, Germany, hosting the tournament 40 years after England’s 1966 Wembley triumph. Oh, the tantalising prospect of David Beckham lifting the trophy in Berlin’s Olympiastadion. In this finally-ripened golden generation of players, we had found men on whom we could fasten our hopes. This was our best chance of glory for years.

It was with this in mind that a few days earlier I had driven to the airport to pick up my colleague, Dennis Rice, who was bringing our secret weapon to Germany – Wayne Rooney’s uncle John Morrey. Uncle John would help us steal a march on our rivals by giving us the inside track on the goings-on in the England camp. At least that was the plan.

As we approached Baden Baden, he stopped talking about football to admire the town’s elegant classical villas and public gardens. In some ways it all felt a bit too perfect, rather like a film set. At any moment it seemed that passers-by might freeze and cheery shopkeepers and waiters burst into song, Hollywood musical-fashion.

Next day the three of us were strolling through the town’s winding streets when we spotted a familiar figure in the distance. Wayne himself. What a golden opportunity for Uncle John. To our confusion, uncle and nephew passed each other without so much as a flicker of acknowledgement. What was going on?

‘Er, we haven’t spoken in seven years,’ John admitted sheepishly. It is fair to say that there had been a misunderstanding.

The build-up to the tournament was dominated by Wayne’s fitness battle after breaking a metatarsal in his right foot. To us, having to accept that Uncle John was not the scoop-machine we’d believed, seemed no less a setback. But no sooner had we said our goodbyes than fortune smiled.

We received a tip that one of the most powerful men in football was selling World Cup tickets on the black market. When we caught up with Ismail Bhamjee, a senior member of the executive committee of Fifa, football’s ruling body, he sold us 12 for England’s match against Trinidad and Tobago at three times their face value.

After we presented our evidence to the Fifa bigwigs in Berlin, Bhamjee, one of 24 men whose votes decided where the World Cup was staged, was ordered to resign immediately and kicked out of Germany in disgrace.

Back in Baden Baden, though, there was only one story in town. As England’s performances became more soporific, so the interest in the WAGs increased. To ensure they were looking their best for the photographers, they spent thousands flying out three beauticians from the Fake Bake tanning company in London. Surely, they might have a story to tell?

Dennis and I invited them to dinner at one of Baden Baden’s finest restaurants in the hope that they might spill a few secrets. Nothing is sacred on Fleet Street and we soon spotted a shifty looking Evening Standard reporter hiding behind a pillar, trying to listen in on our conversation. He needn’t have bothered. Though great company, the beauticians were commendably professional and refused to discuss their clients.

It was a balmy evening and we were sitting outside. At one point Sven’s partner Nancy Dell’Olio floated over to our table. She spoke of planning a dinner party for the WAGs. Had Nancy been hitting Baden Baden’s boutiques? ‘No, not here,’ she said, tossing her black mane. ‘I’ve been in Milan, darling.’

Back at Brenners Park I bumped into Irmgard, an octogenarian widow from Dusseldorf, who had been visiting the hotel for decades. A formidable woman with a carriage like a Prussian general and a voice to match she had, when I last saw her, expressed a jaundiced view of the WAGs – or ‘ze VARGs’ as she called them. Her complaint, pretty much, was that they lowered the tone. ‘I was wrong about them,’ she said. ‘I like them now.’

Irmgard explained she lost a gold and sapphire earring in the breakfast room and had enlisted the help of waitresses ‘but it was one of ze VARGs who found it under a chair. So kind’.

It hadn’t all been sweetness and light though. A small group of young men, relatives of one of the England players, had apparently caused upset by singing Second World War-themed songs in the hotel lift at 2am.

Rather like my pal Irmgard, Brenners is a grande dame of a hotel which, as well as being a favourite of Queen Victoria and Napoleon, has entertained the great and the good for more than a century. 

‘Our guests are usually very refined,’ a doorman told me. Back in England, meanwhile, it amused us to learn that the WAGs were causing fierce debate. Feminists couldn’t seem to decide whether they were letting down the sisterhood or whether their escapades represented a triumph of girl power. In truth, it was only a small number who went out drinking with any regularity, and it was only one of them, Elen Rivas, who danced on a table.

One who let his hair down, though, was England star Gary Neville’s father, the fabulously named Neville Neville. One night in Garibaldi’s he found himself leading a sing-along with a replica World Cup trophy in his hands. An image capturing the special moment appeared on the next day’s front pages.

Perhaps that’s why he was feeling a bit sore when he challenged me one night in the hotel bar where I was enjoying a pre-dinner drink. ‘I know who you are,’ he sneered, mentioning my name. ‘You’re a reporter!’

That’s right, I said and, smiling brightly, told him it was ‘a genuine pleasure to meet Neville Neville in Baden Baden’.

He eyed my outstretched hand suspiciously and a grimace crossed his face. Then he turned on his heels and tottered off without another word.

Can it really be 20 years since Baden Baden? For sure, we’ll never witness such scenes again. Social media means the WAGs of today, as well as being an abstemious bunch, are in control of their own public image. Some – among them England players – have described what unfolded all those years ago as ‘a circus’.

Maybe so. But it wasn’t the WAGs who were the clowns.