The secret recording of an England team talk was carried out by a group of WAGs desperate to discover why they are having to take antibiotics, it was claimed last night.
FA sources say the covert recording equipment was dayglo pink and made by Prada while the crawlspace above the England dressing room was littered with well-thumbed copies of Grazia and empty Lambrini bottles.
The FA initially feared the bug may have been placed by a rival manager in a bid to to discover England's tactics, but the source added: "Tactics? Very good. Someone has gone to an awful lot of bother just to hear someone say 'knock it to Rooney and hope for the best' in an Italian accent."
But police are now convinced an elite group of lithe footballers' wives and girlfriends are using their cash, leisure time and extensive yoga training to find out exactly why their gussets itch like a scrapyard mongrel.
A senior police source said: "The only one we don't want to talk to at this point is Abigail Clancy. The idea that Peter Crouch has had sex with more than one woman has kept us entertained all afternoon."
The discovery was part of a wider operation following a series of burglaries from bacteriology labs near the plush villages of Oxshott and Alderley Edge.
Police say a batch of stolen test tubes contains scrapings of some of the wealthiest urethras in the UK.
The source added: "If they examine the cultures on those slides, they're going to see a whole bunch of puffy-eyed bacterium with black bands around one of their tentacles.
"You get one guess. Spot on."