Rebekah Vardy has denied the allegations.
Rebekah Vardy, wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, has denied that she leaked messages about unrest in the Foxes dressing room after Riyad Mahrez went on strike in February of 2018.
The court heard that Vardy had contacted her agent Caroline Watt after Mahrez had failed to turn up to training in 2018 while trying to pursue a move to Manchester City.
As per the Daily Mail, Rebekah then allegedly sent a WhatsApp message to her agent Watt, which said: “Mahrez not turned up for training again. The lads are fuming.”
Vardy’s agent then suggested that she contact TV reporter Rob Dorsett, who was working on the story as part of coverage for Sky Sports, however the 40-year-old said she didn’t want the story to “come back to me”.
Dorsett however later tweeted: “I’m told Riyad Mahrez failed to report for #lcfc training this morning. He has now missed two training sessions and a game, so is technically in breach of contract and on strike. Sources say he is depressed after failing to get his move to #mcfc.”
Coleen Rooney’s barrister, David Sherborne, said that “it was pretty much unheard of for a player to go on strike and not turn up for training,” while Vardy insisted that the story “absolutely 100% did not come from me”.
Vardy did however confess that it looked – from Watt’s response – that she was “prepared to do her dirty work for her”.
She also stressed that the information did not come from her husband Jamie either, stating that “the gossip was already out there,” and that she “never discussed whether the lads were fuming.”
Watt’s messaged in response said that she could “tell someone” about Mahrez’s absence at training, to which Vardy replied: “Do it.”
Vardy told the High Court that she was “just gossiping” when speaking to her agent and said: “It was speculation of just bits of information that I had heard and overheard, and also read in the press before.
“Yes, it doesn’t look good there, I was gossiping about things that were already in the public domain. I was just gossiping.”
Mahrez did eventually return to the Leicester side before eventually moving to Man City the following summer for a fee of £60m in 2018.
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