London's 'goal diggers'

Her willowy figure was barely covered by a metallic-finish skirt and top, her hair a pale gold several shades lighter than her tan. Here, in the footballers' haunt that is Chinawhite nightclub, her head swivelled at each new entrance. Every young man who walked down the stairs and into the deep crimson opulence of Chinese-lacquered daybeds and opium platforms was appraised.

In what must be a rare excursion into word play for the super-rich lads of London's Premiership clubs, players nickname such young women "goal diggers". These girls - often still in their teens - are both predator and prey in football's uninhibited world of recreational sex.

A short cab drive away in Knightsbridge, Kieron Dyer and Rio Ferdinand called for the bill at the Wellington Club, another favoured goal digger hunting ground. It had been a long night and the two footballers and their friends had been drinking champagne: Kristal, at £350 a bottle. Dyer insisted on paying. The total was around £2,500; with a grin, the Newcastle midfielder added a few hundred pounds as a tip and signed the slip for just under £3,000.

It was nearly dawn and the pair were unaware of the storm that was about to break. A 17-year-old girl was to allege she had been gang raped just 24 hours before. Today, when it seemed English football's reputation was at the limit of its endurance, it emerged that two Leeds United players had been arrested after a new and separate rape allegation.

A bewildered public might justly ask what is going on? The answer, undoubtedly, is that the extraordinary wealth of football and the cult of celebrity it spawns have created a breed of young men for whom no gratification is off limits.

Nowhere is this more evident than in London's nightclubs. An entire culture of big-spending and predatory sex flourishes behind the red ropes and burly men in black suits who guard the doors.

Yet, it has to be said, however unsavoury it may seem after the rape allegations, some young women can appear as predatory as the players. The girls share defining characteristics. One of them, often, is the desire to bed a footballer. This can be an entree into a glamorous world far removed from their own lives.

Their odyssey to London's clubland, from the anonymity of suburban semis, may begin by bus, Tube or minicab. Perhaps later, much later, when they have seen more money in a few hours of champagne-fuelled flirtation than they could hope to earn in a month, they will leave Chinawhite or the Wellington in a limousine.

Just as young soccer stars favour a Dolce & Gabbana shirt with designer jeans and lashings of hair gel, so there is a certain uniformity to a goal digger's look. Their outfits are often little more than a wisp of a top and a microskirt cut to give a glimpse of underwear, or tight trousers daringly lowered at the crotch. Fake tans are de rigueur. Hair is almost always blonde, often lengthened with hair extensions that cost up to £600, the nails are long, manicured and fake.

Nicola Ulian, a model and a dedicated denizen of the London clubs, said she takes four hours to prepare for an evening out. She can always spot a footballers' table: "First, it's awash with champagne and secondly, it's surrounded by girls doing provocative poses."

The daughter of a consultant psychiatrist, she grew up in a comfortable home in Manchester, attended a private day school and left at 16, with an ambition to become a florist. At the age of 20 she entered a modelling contest and won a year's contract with an agency. Now 23, she has graduated from topless modelling to television commercials.

She goes to a club most nights: "Footballers are just like any other lads," she said. "They want sex. There are lots of girls who make a beeline for them. They are not models or anything - they do ordinary jobs, but for one night, they really are someone. They are surrounded by famous people who are spending more money on drinks than they have ever seen. You can't be surprised if they don't say no when things get heavy.

"Some deliberately want to kiss and tell. It's well known that some girls target footballers so they can get money from a tabloid for saying they had a fling with them. About £8,000 is the going rate.That's the way the system works. The girls I know who have gone off with footballers have never had a bad experience. Mostly, they say they're great at sex and have fantastic stamina."

Some of the women may be veterans of "roasting", the practice of sharing a girl around a group of men, often footballers - who, it seems, cannot abandon team instincts, even in matters of sex.

At one Premiership club, it is established tradition for new players to be introduced to a girl who will take him to a hotel room for sex. What he doesn't know is that she has been prompted by his new team-mates who hide in the room and leap out at a crucial moment.

Nicholas Meikle, the self-styled party organiser who said he had consensual sex with the "gang-rape" teenager, said soccer stars often indulged in "roasting" sessions, when they would have group sex involving one or more girls. Asked how many times he had taken part in such activities this year he said: "Probably at least seven, eight this year, maybe nine times ... definitely."

The phenomenon is not new - several football stars have been identified as playing leading roles in group sex orgies. And whatever the outcome of the current police investigation, it is unlikely those familiar with the club scene will see the soccer groupies as victims.

"Most of them know exactly what they are doing," a Chinawhite regular said. "They are quite cynical about it. They go out to pull a footballer and they're disappointed if they don't. If it involves being shared around a bit, well, so be it."

A 23-year-old model, who asked not to be identified, said she believed footballers got a special "buzz" out of group sex. Like so many girls on the scene, she has a decidedly homely background.

She still lives with her parents in Kent - her mother runs a cleaning company and her father is a maintenance man - but the focus of her life is in London. She loves getting dressed up - usually in miniskirts and a tiny top to show off her surgicallyenhanced breasts ("because I can".) - and she loves the attention it brings her. "I'm a footballer magnet," she says proudly.

"All my boyfriends have been players. I split up with a very famous Premiership footballer a month ago. He was an absolute pig. When we had been going out for six months he suggested that I have sex with two of his friends. I thought he was joking but I was appalled when I realised he wasn't.

"If we were in bed together in a hotel, his friends would think nothing about walking in. Footballers love to share girls and they love group sex - they get the biggest buzz from it. They've all seen each other naked in the shower room so they're not embarrassed and it's a competition thing - they want to show they've got the best technique at banging girls, as they call it. They love giving girls a roasting and they don't have any respect for them.

"If they meet a girl in a club they'll lead her on, letting her think she's only going to have sex with one of them, then once she gets back to the hotel room, they'll all try to have a go with her. The next day, they'll slag her off, calling her a dirty cow. Often, they'll do it in front of the girl to degrade her.

"They often go for young girls they can just use for sex. They'll circle a club lookingfor victims but quite often the girl will just throw herself at them anyway. The girls think they will end up having a relationship but it rarely goes beyond a night."

Carrie Spencer, a 19-year-old model, and frequent visitor to Chinawhite and the Wellington, is among clubgoers who are less easily impressed by brash young men with Ferraris.

"Recently I was at a table next to a Premiership footballer. He was giving me loads of compliments, telling me he liked my dress and that I was beautiful. He kept touching my knee and trying to get really close but I wasn't interested. Eventually we all moved on to another club but he left with two girls. The next day I heard they'd had a threesome."

Ms Spencer, who lives in Docklands with four other models, is dedicated to her career. She was studying for A-levels when her father, a factory worker, died suddenly. She decided to give up school, but wants to do a part-time psychology course. "Footballers tend to chat you up, trying to work out how far you'd go with them and if you're not giving them the right signals, they'll just move on to another girl straight away. They're not discreet about it. Their usual chat up line is 'Are you a model?'

"There are girls who go out specifically to meet footballers - they just throw themselves at them. They tend to be the girls with normal jobs, not models.

"I know of one girl who went back to a footballer's hotel room and he asked her to urinate on him - known as a golden shower - and she did it. I think she was so desperate to be with him that she would have done anything."