A week before England’s first match in the Euro 2020 tournament, Phil Foden, the team’s shy midfielder, was deep in a pre-game project. Fans were treated to a glimpse of it on Instagram: the dark-haired 21-year-old was sitting wrapped in a barber’s gown, half his head smeared with peroxide. Over 50,000 people liked the picture.
The next day Foden unveiled his transformation in full, a white platinum crop with a hairline so straight you could use it as a set square. The effect was somewhere between Paul “Gazza” Gascoigne, Newcastle United’s legendary player in the 1980s, and Eminem. In pandemic-weary Britain, the internet exploded with a mixture of awe and derision. As Sheldon Edwards, the barber behind Foden’s metamorphosis, wrote on Instagram: “We done a madness.”
Grooming has assumed a significance for many footballers that would have been unthinkable 30 years ago. A lack of interest in personal appearance used to be seen as a totem of masculinity. George Best had his mop top, Gazza his bleach and Chris Waddle a trademark mullet. But these were exceptions.
Today’s endlessly restyled barnets reflect more than just higher standards of male self-care. Over the past 30 years, football has become more commercial. Players who transcend the team uniform and establish themselves as an individual brand may attract millions of pounds in sponsorship, as ambassadors for anything from shoes and sportswear to razors and energy drinks.
The barber behind Phil Foden’s metamorphosis wrote on Instagram: “We done a madness”
A haircut is a quick way to stand out: footballers sometimes attract as much attention now for their tonsorial statements as for their on-pitch accomplishments. Some Premier League players get a cut every week to make their trim “fresh” for each game. And the person wielding the clippers is often Sheldon Edwards, better known by his trade moniker, HD.
Edwards is a first-generation immigrant from Jamaica who is largely self-taught as a hairdresser. Over the years he has made up with charisma and flair what he lacked in technical training (when he was first asked to dye hair by Radja Nainggolan, an Inter Milan midfielder, he had to look up how to do it on YouTube). And he has surfed the wave of changing masculinity in Britain, helped along by Instagram.
Some of the biggest stars in the game now turn to Edwards to burnish their image. His client list includes Manchester United’s flamboyant French midfielder Paul Pogba, as well as many of the England squad: Jude Bellingham, Raheem Sterling and Jadon Sancho. His trademark looks include clean lines and bold contrasts of thickness and colour, which help players stand out on TV.
With his bleached blond twists, medallions and Gucci socks, Edwards looks like a celebrity in his own right. His salon, HD Cutz, is less glitzy, sitting between a pizza takeaway and a business park in Clapham in south-west London. Hip-hop blares from the speakers, drowning out commentary from the football showing on five flat-screen TVs. A ring light in the corner provides optimal background illumination for selfies. It’s a cut above the average barbershop, but only the gold hairdryers point to the owner’s A-list clientele.
Some Premier League players get a new haircut every week
The most expensive cut on offer at the salon is £50; Edwards won’t say how much he charges when he drives out to a footballer’s house. When he first started hairdressing in the 1990s the idea that you could build a lucrative client base out of footballers would have seemed unlikely. But “the whole game changed” in 2000, he says. The catalyst? David Beckham.
Beckham was already known for his metrosexual style by then, partly thanks to his union with Victoria “Posh Spice” Adams: his floppy boyband fringe stood out among the more conventional tresses of his Manchester United teammates; in 1998 he stepped out wearing a sarong. But it was Beckham’s grade-one buzz cut in 2000 that became a media sensation. A palimpsest of tattoos and some eye-watering sponsorship deals followed. Other footballers took note.
The rise of celebrity footballers coincided with a vast infusion of cash into the game. Premier League clubs now have a combined annual revenue of some £4.5bn, according to Deloitte, more than 20 times the top clubs’ income before the league was created in 1992. At that point only around 20 top-tier league games were shown on live TV in Britain each season. Today you can watch 200 if you subscribe to enough channels.
The profile of the game rose in step with these TV deals: clubs get a hefty share of the revenue from broadcasting rights, as well as attracting more sponsorship. The players’ wives and girlfriends (known as WAGS) added an element of reality TV to the sport’s appeal, silicon-enhanced jewels in a multimedia crown.
Football has become a beautiful game in every respect: players are expected to shine in their many media appearances and grin in ad campaigns. That doesn’t leave much room for individuality. Clubs can also control a player’s personal projects, vetoing sponsorship deals if they clash with the team’s own corporate arrangements. But as Beckham discovered, the more high profile you become, the better chance you have of setting your own terms. One way that players can both boost and control their own image, and the money that comes with it, is through their hair.
Social media has increased the opportunities for players to become brands in their own right as they’re no longer reliant merely on TV or pitch appearances to connect with fans. Some players reportedly receive five-figure sums for individual sponsored Instagram posts.
Becks’s bi-annual makeovers seem quaint compared with what players now do to keep their followers interested
The rewards can be high. When Adidas gave David Beckham £1.25m to wear its boots in 2001, this seemed a dazzling sum. Now Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior, a Brazilian footballer who plays for Paris Saint-Germain, reportedly gets £23m a year for wearing Puma’s King Platinums – and that’s just one of his sponsors (in 2018 the Sun crowned Neymar, with his 35 endorsement deals, “the world’s most branded footballer”).
Yet influence comes with pressure, too: players have to stay relevant. Beckham’s bi-annual makeovers seem quaint compared with what players now do to keep their followers interested. Neymar, who has more than 150m followers on Instagram, reportedly spends €2,000 ($2,400) a month on his hair.
Beckham torpedoed expectations not just about what footballers could earn, but what constituted a manly public image. When he launched his own citrusy fragrance in 2005, the male grooming industry was in its infancy. Cristiano Ronaldo, a Portugese megastar, now flogs shampoo and sells his own range of “CR7 Underwear”. Where footballers lead, society follows: the male market for “personal care” is now seeing double-digit growth worldwide each year.
The benefits of a more relaxed approach to masculinity have been reaped by the next generation of footballers – and by Edwards, as barber to the players. Jadon Sancho, the England and Dortmund winger, “loves to look nice”, says Edwards. He is “particular about his hairline, his curls, the way his fade drops, his sideburns, the way his beard is, his moustache is”. Ross Barkley, a midfielder for Chelsea, summons Edwards to do his hair before each game. Paul Pogba, who is renowned for his frequent restyling, likes patterns to be shaved on his head with a razor. “It’s a long session with Paul,” says Edwards.
Edwards’ low-key likeability is one reason so many players seek him out. His break into the footballing elite came a few years ago when a friend recommended him to Moussa Dembélé, then playing for Fulham. Dembélé liked the cut, they became friends and the Belgian introduced the barber to his teammates. These days Edwards’ Instagram feed carries frequent fistbump emojis and shout-outs to his “HD brothers” on the pitch.
“Everybody started saying, ‘This is the haircut, the haircut done it, never go back to the old haircut’”
Hairdressing has something of the confessional to it. If a player is going through a bad patch, says Edwards, “football sometimes is the last thing we do speak about”. Some clients talk to him about the racism they’ve experienced both online and from the stands, such as fans booing when players take the knee in support of Black Lives Matter. Players are still optimistic that they are making a difference, says Edwards.
Edwards knows that he plays a part in boosting players’ confidence as much as shaping their cornrows. When Raheem Sterling was off his game earlier this season, he decided to change his style, snipping his plaits for a short, shaved crop. Soon afterwards he found the net again. “Everybody started saying, ‘This is the haircut, the haircut done it, never go back to the old haircut,’” Edwards laughs. The player agreed. On January 27th he posted a picture of himself in profile on Instagram, captioned: “Low fade Sterlo is different”.
A typical day for Edwards begins at 4am in London. He makes it to Birmingham for 8am, Sheffield at 10.30am and then Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds, before returning home to London in the early hours. “I can’t recall the last time I slept for over five hours,” he says. Even the end of Euro 2020 won’t bring a lull. Foden’s teammates have said they will all copy his “HD certified” crop if England win the tournament. Haircuts can make a footballer stand out. They can also help a team stand together. ■
Rachel Lloyd is assistant editor of The Economist’s Books and Arts section. Josh Spencer is assistant editor of 1843 magazine
IMAGES: GETTY, ALAMY
On me head, son: the secret economics of footballers’ hair - The Economist
Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment