The one to watch: Raheem Sterling
While getting by on £30,000 a week at Liverpool, Sterling installed a barber’s chair in his Merseyside home. Now trousering £200,000 a week at Manchester City, it’s quite possible the young England star has upgraded to an entire on-site salon staffed by a barbershop quartet. Either way, he’s clearly committed to the art of hairdressing, and – to borrow a hackneyed phrase from the sports pages – is one to watch in tonsorial terms. Sterling changes his style regularly and is currently sporting some chichi mini-dreads, though nothing has yet topped the full-on Janelle Monae pompadour he was rocking for a time back there at Anfield. Ring to book an appointment.
The Teddy-boy quiff: Adam Lallana
Sterling’s recent move to City meant he had to give up his gig shilling Nivea, the official LFC emollient. His former team-mate Adam Lallana took over as the face of the campaign, and fronts it sporting a mousy Teddy-boy quiff and raffish Elizabethan beard – a thoroughly cutting-edge fusion of Conan O’Brien and Lord Edmund Blackadder II. It’s worth noting that Lallana spends more time in the advert working on his whiskers than his hair, suggesting a shift in the grooming priorities of the elite footballer. Beards have become de rigueur in recent seasons – New York-based sommelier, philosopher and erstwhile Juventus midfielder Andrea Pirlo leading the way here – to the point that some recent Premier League fixtures have resembled a scramble for the last packet of Cap’n Crunch at a Brick Lane breakfast bar.
Clipped Wings: Mario Balotelli
From Sonic to Super Mario. Poor old Balotelli has recently been issued with a “no daft hairstyles” diktat. It’s not been made clear whether this has been inserted into his contract by his new club AC Milan – which feels he wastes too much time and energy posting images of his ever-changing barnet on social media – or is part of a cease-and-desist order by the BBC, a recent Mohican with rococo shaved patterns having flagrantly plagiarised the henna-inspired ice-cream roll that saw Nadiya crowned star baker on The Great British Bake Off.
The hedgehog: Stephan El Shaarawy
Just as we live out our fantasies vicariously through rock stars, whose stronger constitutions enable them to cope with stuff likely to harm the common man – such as hard liquor, drugs and skinny jeans – so we need our footballers to sport the larger-than-life hairstyles we could never carry off ourselves in a million years. It’s a trendy tradition that stretches back to the 1960s Beatle cut of Georgie Best, the 1970s glam stylings of Charlie George, and the 1980s business-in-front, party-in-back philosophy espoused by Chris Waddle. El Shaarawy’s extreme Mohawk, teetering at the full height of a French loaf, continues this proud lineage. Nick Grimshaw’s quiff plugged into the national grid, it’s just the right (ie wrong) side of absurd, is wholly impractical for professional sport and is therefore rather magnificent. A singular style, but then El Shaarawy is hardly your average Joe, earning his corn running around a patch of turf atop a car park in a yacht-cluttered tax haven. Yes, there he is, living out our fantasies.
The rat tail: Rodrigo Palacio
Another look that your average punter would struggle to pull off down the local, certainly if they wanted a quiet evening without being frisked every 15 minutes by the police for small plastic bags. But, on a toned athlete, this otherwise seedy appendage can lend its wearer an air of dynamic glamour. Imagine Palacio haring down the pitch in full flight, his little furry friend hovering behind him in hot pursuit. Sonic the Hedgehog and Tails made flesh. Shades, too, of Sir Bobby Charlton’s famous scrapeover – a much-maligned style, and unfairly so. For there was something rather swashbuckling about those long strands billowing in Bobby’s dashing wake as he whistled yet another unstoppable pearler into the top corner from 40 yards, leaving a vapour trail with the merest hint of pomade.
The ‘special hat’: Wayne Rooney
Poor Rooney’s regenerated short back and sides attracts no end of flak. It should be noted that most of this criticism is levelled by gentlemen who write about football for a living and, let’s face it, we’d collectively make a sheep dragged through a hedge backwards look like George Clooney. It’s a bit of a cheek, really. In any case, while everyone’s aware that Rooney’s special new hat has been teased into existence by science boffins, the result isn’t so brazenly conspicuous that it makes him look like Frankie Howerd or Jude Law on a windy day. It’s neat, tidy and serviceable enough. And the best thing is, it keeps him happy – it has given him the confidence to become England’s leading goalscorer of all time, for a start – so that should be that. Live and let live. Everybody step off!
