Italian beauty pageants remain a hotbed of WAG activity

Approximately 100 per cent of Italian WAGs have a history of competing in beauty pageants, and Daniela Fontani is no exception. The twenty-year-old was a contestant in Miss Italy 2008, qualifying as the runner up in Miss Tuscany. She didn’t scoop the big prize, but she did bag Fiorentina defender Alessandro Gamberini.

An Miss Italy finalist who’s also a WAG? Surely some mistake…

When he isn’t brawling with teammates, Roma and Italy midfielder Alberto Aquilani loves nothing better than keeping company with beauty pageant-types. Before he caught the attention of Miss Italy 2003 Francesca Chillemi, he stepped out with Miss World 2002 contestant Pamela Camassa.

Yet another stupendously hot member of the Italian WAG circuit

Like so many stunning Italian WAGs before her (Letizia Filippi, Francesca Lodo, Martina Colombari, Francesca Chillemi, Vincenza Cacace and Elisabetta Gregoraci to name but a few), Sara Tommasi is a graduate of the much-lauded Miss Italy pageant. She was runner up in the 1998 competition, and soon moved on to bigger things. Well, at the very least she moved on to bigger boobs (which she displays rather frequently), and relationships with West Ham’s Valon Behrami (who’s now rutting former WOTD Elena Bonzanni) and Filippo Inzaghi (whose numerous trysts have included Aída Yéspica and Elena Barolo).

Here’s the (rather good) reason C-Ron left Nereida

Cristiano Ronaldo’s non-prostitute-based romantic history is peppered with lovely-brunette-model-types - Gemma Atkinson (who was brunette at the time), Mia Judaken, Karina Ferro, and most recently Nereida Gallardo - and he has just added one more to his little black book.

Her name is Letizia Filippi, and she is a 30-year-old model (seven years his senior) and TV personality from Foligno, Italy. The pair met at a yacht party during one of Ronaldo’s numerous holidays this summer, and the Manchester Utd star has since sent her flowers and had dinner with her. One Italian newspaper claimed Letizia stole his attention with a ‘gaze that melted him like an icicle in the sun’. How nice for him.

Former Miss Italy enjoys footballers and constant nakedness

I have not actually seen the agreement a model must sign to become Miss Italy, but I can only assume there is a clause stipulating a compulsory relationship with a footballer. The pageant show has already given us Martina Colombari, Francesca Chillemi, Vincenza Cacace and Elisabetta Gregoraci, and now 1999 winner and nudity enthusiast Francesca Lodo joins their ranks. She has been engaged to Inter’s Javier Zanetti (despite the fact that she met his current wife in 1992) and she has also enjoyed the company of Francesco Coco - a self-professed ‘drugged-up gay who lives in nightclubs’ who has also steamrollered former WOTD Manuela Arcuri.

Further proof that Italian footballers have a ‘type’

Although not quite at Iain Dowie’s level, AC Milan’s former centre-back Alessandro Costacurta is about as ‘homely’ as an Italian gentleman can get. Despite this aesthetic impediment, the 42-year-old (who only retired last year) has managed to land Martina Colombari as a wife. Like every other Italian WAG out there, she is a Miss Italy winner (1991) who is partial to removing her clothes in front of the lens…

A Miss Italy who dates a footballer? Surely not

Due to a trend started by good ol’ George Best in the sixties, the most popular occupation of your typical WAG of the Day appears to be ‘beauty queen’: Miss Italy 2003 Francesca Chillemi joins Aída Yéspica, Vincenza Cacace, Elisabetta Gregoraci and Giorgia Palmas in the realm of competitive goodlookingness. Francesca’s efforts have been rewarded not only with a crown and scepter, but also the affections of Cagliari Calcio’s Vincenzo Marruocco and more recently Roma’s sass-mouthed midfielder Alberto Aquilani.

Italy’s greatest export since pizza and corruption

It seems that absolutely nothing can stop an Italian sports star landing one of his nation’s infinite amount of gorgeous models as a WAG. Just ask former AC Milan and Fiorentina star Giuseppe Pancaro - his goatee-clad face, thinning hair and distinct lack of silverware has not stopped him shacking up with the very lovely Vincenza Cacace.