McLoughlin: For some other halves, life’s a party. (Reuters)

Baden-Baden, June 25: It is not so much a game of two halves as one of two other halves.

As Coleen McLoughlin, Wayne Rooney’s girlfriend, partied until the early hours yesterday, Maria de la Cruz, the wife of Ecuador’s highest-paid footballer, was tucked up in bed at 10 pm.

David Beckham and his fellow English multi-millionaires have lavished tens of thousands of pounds bringing over a whole coterie of big-spending, high-living wives, partners and assorted hangers-on to Germany for the World Cup.

But Ecuador, England’s opponents today, have only one star, Ulises de la Cruz, and his wife is no Posh.

Not for her the marathon shopping trips or raucous nights out; not for her the pampering or the bling.

She spends all her time with her 20-month-old daughter, Samantha, strolling around the grounds of her team’s modest hotel.

“We live quietly,” Maria de la Cruz, 25, a farmer’s daughter, said. “I wish there were some more wives from Ecuador here with me but they’re not. They can’t afford to travel such a long way from Ecuador.”

Maria, who wears braces on her teeth and no make-up, said: “I don’t like designer clothes. They are too expensive. I just wear clothes that are from ordinary shops.

“I am not famous in Ecuador. It’s just my husband who is well known and I think that is a good thing.”

Home for Maria, whose husband plays for Aston Villa, is a semi-detached house in Sutton Coldfield, on the outskirts of Birmingham.

She is staying with the Ecuador team at the Bristol Hotel in Bad Kissinden, a spa town 175 miles from the England base in Baden-Baden. Rooms cost about ?56-a-night compared with the ?1,080 Posh and her colleagues are paying at the Brenner’s Park Hotel.

On Friday, 19 of the 22 wives and girlfriends of the England team, who are reported to have spent ?10,000 on fake tans, were recovering after partying until 4 am.

The evening began when Nancy Dell’Olio, girlfriend of the manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, invited the women out for a farewell dinner at a restaurant in a moated castle near Baden-Baden. This will be the last tournament with England for Dell’Olio because her boyfriend is being replaced as manager.

The women racked up a bill of ?3,000 for lobster, steak and champagne before returning to the town to finish the night off. The bill was charged to their hotel for the players to pay. At a bar called Garibaldi’s they sang along with England fans and downed bottles of champagne with strawberry syrup, glasses of vodka and Red Bull and shots of sambucca.

Among those celebrating were Elen Rives, Frank Lampard’s fianc?e, Michael Carrick’s girlfriend Lisa Roughead, Stewart Downing’s girlfriend Michaela Henderson-Thynne and Alex Curran, Steven Gerrard’s girlfriend. They tottered back to their hotel when the bar closed.