Coleen Rooney is ruthless

Coleen Rooney (L) and Rebekah Vardy (R) Craig Galloway/Prosports/Shutterstock | Associated Newspapers Ltd/Shutterstock

The wives of two English soccer stars are engaged in an online war over leaking stories to the press. It’s a story that could only happen in 2019.

Coleen Rooney, the wife of longtime England national team star Wayne Rooney, is accusing Jamie Vardy’s wife of blabbing to British tabloid The Sun every time she saw something juicy on Coleen’s Instagram stories.

Sick of seeing information posted on her private Instagram account show up in the papers, Rooney concocted a diabolical and frankly genius scheme to smoke out the leaker. She had a feeling it was Vardy, so she blocked everyone from viewing her stories except for Rebekah and began posting about things that were not true.

There was a story about traveling to Mexico for a medical treatment to “select” the sex of the Rooneys next child. Another article claimed Coleen wanted to start a new TV show. The last straw was a story published Tuesday about flooding at the couple’s new mansion in Cheshire. That’s when Coleen decided to go public with the results of her investigation.

Vardy fired back at Rooney, claiming that many people have access to her Instagram account and that she never spoke with the press about Rooney.

I can’t help but imagine what a major story this would be in the U.S. if it happened with the partners of two American athletes. Imagine if LeBron’s wife discovered that Anthony Davis’s girlfriend had been telling TMZ about their every move. It would break the internet. Congrats to every English sports site for having the rest of their week already planned out.

At long last

Sixers star Ben Simmons stinks at jump shots. He has attempted 17 three-pointers in his two NBA seasons and made none of them.

His reluctance to attempt shots from beyond the arc is such a major storyline in Philadelphia that a video of Simmons drilling threes in a pickup game this summer went viral. So when Simmons rose up and hit a three in a preseason game last night, the arena went wild.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s a preseason game against a team from China. The defender let Simmons have the shot and he took it. Let’s wait until Simmons nails one off a catch-and-shoot, like Steven Adams.

Or on a slick fake like Boban Marjanovic.

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Email dan.gartland@simail.com with any feedback or follow me on Twitter for approximately one half-decent baseball joke per week. Bookmark this page to seeprevious editions of Hot Clicks and find the newest edition every day. By popular request I’ve made a Spotify playlist of the music featured here. Visit our Extra Mustard page throughout each day for more offbeat sports stories.