The 16 best soccer haircuts of all time
The history of soccer is littered with some of the best and worst hairstyles humanity has ever seen. Here is a selection of the best soccer haircuts.
Soccer players have it all. Fame, money and the adulation of millions of fans. But they have a lot of time on their hands, too. They might also be surrounded by fawning sycophants who are too frightened to ask “what the hell is that on your head?”
Where once they might have spent their afternoons drinking the day away, the modern soccer player appears to kill time by getting a crazy new haircut. This list is not restricted to current players, though. Soccer history has seen countless scarcely believable barnets, and this list stretches from the 1960s to the present day.
Young men with time and money on their hands is a highly dangerous combination when it comes to haircuts. Dye jobs, perms, mullets, comb overs and some which defy classification and naming. And that’s before we even get to the current cream of the crops.
The barbers of the world must rejoice when a soccer star enters their shop. The freedom to create something absurd and a good tip for their troubles? Heaven. I used to go to a father and son run place where a locally famous soccer player got his weekly trim. Most customers gawped at the photos of him getting ludicrous patterns shaved into his head. I was more interested in the framed photo of the dad giving George Harrison his mid-1960s Beatle cut. Each to their own, eh?
We shall begin our countdown with a famous former member of the USMNT. I bet you know exactly who it’s going to be.
16. Alexi Lalas
Many of the haircuts in the list will be dismissed as the results of the folly of youth. This one is no exception. But you’d be hard pressed to see a current photo of Alexi Lalas and recognize the above fuzzball as the same guy.
The former defender will also not be the only player here who accentuates his hairstyle with questionable facial hair either. Long hair often looks bad on a man. A long beard would also turn off many people. Combine the two, and you have a hideous golden ticket.
Some players are made to look dreadful by the horrific kits that happened to be in fashion during their time. The above photo is plenty of evidence of that. They might not be able to do anything about a bad strip, so why combine it with a terrible haircut?
Lalas was also known to accentuate the madness of the style further by employing a hairband. This ensured that the top remained flat while the sides merely grew more and more bushy. Add that to the beard, and he had a veritable forest of hair below his nose and ears. Beautiful.
Lalas perhaps had a slight excuse, though, as he was a musician on the side. The notion of horrendous haircuts is also a staple in the music world. One of Lalas’ solo albums was called Ginger, as if he needed to draw further attention to his remarkable hairdo. It’s currently available for $1.50 on Discogs, so I imagine it’s a classic. Much like Lalas’ hair clearly was in the mid-90s.