Can hairstyles win you football matches?
The days of the short back and sides or nothing seem to have disappeared almost completely from any decent football team. This got me wondering if there was any correlation between the quality of the team and the “stylishness” of the players. Maybe David Seaman has a similar thought; I can’t see any other reason for the pony tail that he sported for so long.
The obvious place to start is South America. The national side that is Brazil, in the 2002 world cup in South Korea and Japan, had a few odd looks knocking around their squad. The obvious one is Ronaldinho whose dreadlocks would not have looked out of place on Bob Marley’s head. The fact that he went on with this obvious distraction to win world cups, league titles and many individual awards just makes you think how good he could have been if he hadn’t been messing around with his hair. The other player of note in the Brazil squad who had, shall we say an interesting hair style was Ronaldo. Not the Ronaldo but the one who shall be remembered, unfortunately, for liking pies a bit too much. The hair though was just as bad as his waistline; it looked like someone had relieved themselves on his forehead. Apologies for being course but it really did. Maybe it was these odd looks that made sure Brazil went on to win the world cup or maybe it was a coincidence, I guess we’ll never know.
Argentina had a very strange world cup last year. With Maradonna at the helm things were never going to be normal but it got so crazy I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that they sacrificed one of the coaches to please the gods. Maybe this was brought about by the appearance of the players. Most of them look like they had just escaped from a prisoner of war camp. Unshaven, hair down to their shoulders, they would have looked out of place in Brixton. Players such as Heinze, Jonas and even the “great” man himself, Maradonna all wore the same look of unkemptness. They did all right too, if you count their cheating against Ghana, but old habits die hard.
The golden rule with dolling yourself up when you’re a footballer is to not do it when you’re between the sticks. Many have tried and many have had their head in their hands shortly after. England of course have prime examples, as ever when someone is giving out a bad statistic about goal keepers. The previously mentioned David Seaman is up there and of course how can we forget David James. He’s had more hair changes than Ronaldo’s had hot dinners. Strangely enough the only time that he has been alright in goal when he’s gone for a simple and short snip. Rene Higuaita is one of the favourites and yet worst goal keepers ever and look at his hair. He will always be remembered for that scorpion kick which although was incredible, it was completely useless. He could have used his hands but I still think it was an amazing feat. It was a one off though and soon he was holding his head in his hands like all the other keepers that played around with their hair.
