Haircuts, piercing and tattoos. It is what you do when you are earning telephone number sized amounts of cash per week as a Premier League Footballer.
We’ve even heard of some footballers (step forward Raheem Sterling) having a barber’s chair and salon built into their own home.
For some Premier League players, the haircut has become part of their personality.
Contrastingly, for others, haircare is never an issue as they either just let it grow, or shave it all off.
But all these different hands on, or laissez-faire approaches have yielded something.
Some of the weirdest, strangest and downright oddest haircuts of modern times.
So, with that in mind, and with photographic evidence where possible, here’s our top ten of the worst haircuts in Premier League history.
The Ten Weird, Wacky And Wonderful Haircuts of the Premier League Era
David Luiz (Chelsea, Arsenal)
Good old Sideshow Bob is one of the first names you think of when it comes to iconic haircuts in the Premier League. His frizzy 1970’s styled half-afro, half-perm seemed like it must have come from the deranged thoughts of a barber.
But actually, it is Luiz’s natural look.
Now plying his trade back home in his native Brazil for Flamengo, his hair remains the same tangle of disorganised curls as it ever has.
Only perhaps nowadays, there’s a few more grey hairs in amongst the rest.
Mamadou Sakho (Liverpool & Crystal Palace)
Mamadou Sakho is one of those players who decided upon a daft haircut early on in his career. Then he stuck doggedly with it ever since.
Palace and Liverpool fans will remember his rather unusual shaved mini- Mohican style, often embellished with a bit of blonde dye for the small tuft of hair on the top of his head.
He’s jazzed things up a little nowadays. The standard shaved sides and back have done and now he has patterns on his head. A bit like those weird crop circles you find in the middle of fields in Wiltshire.
Admittedly, it’s not my style, but full marks to Mamadou for sticking with it to the bitter end.
Marouane Fellaini (Everton & Manchester United)
Fellaini’s famous afro was the talk of the Premier League when the Belgian signed for Everton and he soon proved that he was much more than a walking hairdo with a series of fine performances for the Toffees.
Eventually, a move to Manchester United followed and he enjoyed a relatively good spell with the Red Devils, before moving to China to play football.
He’s a player who once tried to move away from his afro, cutting it short and even trying dreadlocks once, but rather like Samson, without his locks, he just didn’t seem to be the same player.
Sadio Mane (Southampton & Liverpool)
A bit like when he was on the field in the Premier League, Sadio Mane’s hairstyles have dazzled and bemused opponents over the years.
From the moment he signed for Southampton and then in his most successful spells at Liverpool, Mane excelled as one of the top players of his era. So much so that nobody really felt able to take the mickey out of a bewildering away of odd haircuts.
From a high-forehead cut with flat top (which made it looked like his wig had slipped back 3 inches) to that unusual diagonal side swirl of hair – it is a testament to how good Mane was that people look back now and say “Oh yes, that was a bad haircut wasn’t it?”
Willian (Chelsea, Arsenal, Fulham)
Another player who shone brightly, particularly at Chelsea, and whose famous afro haircut became a part of his own unique style.
Willian has never really changed his style and despite what others may have said or inferred, age isn’t slowing him down, either at the barbers or on the football pitch.
It’s hard to imagine Willian with anything other than a proper 1970s Jackson Five inspired afro and perhaps that is the way it should be.
Andy Carroll (Newcastle, Liverpool, West Ham)
Andy Carroll’s long flowing hair looked amazing when he was leaping like a salmon to bullet a header past a goalkeeper.
The rest of the time it just looked a bit like he was a Chris Waddle acolyte, unable to bring himself to try and tidy up his mane at the local barbershop.
Part of the reason may be because one time he did venture out to a barber, he came back with corn-rows, which ranks up there with the most idiotic hairstyle choice since Kevin Keegan got that 1970s perm.
Freddie Ljungberg (Arsenal, Everton)
The busy Swede was a star man for Arsenal and Sweden in his time, as well as having a spell at Everton and he was certainly one of the better stars in the Premier League at his best.
Yet oddly, for all that time, Ljungberg persisted with a strange willo-the-wisp kind of semi-mohican haircut, with pinky red tips on the hair on the top of his head.
Fortunately, Ljungberg was such a talent with the ball at his feet that you didn’t really stare long enough at his head to realise that he looked like he’d fallen asleep and let his 3 year old play with pink paint and a pair of scissors.
Abel Xavier (Liverpool, Everton, Middlesbrough)
One of a small number of players to have played for Liverpool and Everton in the Premier League, sadly for Abel, it was his haircut rather than his play at right back that saw him stand out.
Never one afraid of a pack of dye in the supermarket, Xavier would lavish blonde dye, as well as other colours, over his hair, beard, moustache and pretty much anywhere else he could find available.
Described unkindly once as looking like “Father Christmas in a negative” if he’d spent as much time practising defending as he did at the barbers, he would have made more than just 75 Premier League appearances.
Paul Pogba (Manchester United)
Paul Pogba has had as many haircuts as he has had appearances for Manchester United in his career. At least that is how it seems.
Not all Pogba’s haircuts were bad. Some were pretty standard and looked fine. But he always knew when the limelight would be on him and you could then rely on him and his barber to come up with something ridiculous.
Dyed hair for the Manchester derby? Strange shaved symbols and patterns for big games? It was all in Pogba’s armoury.
It’s just a pity his talents on the field seemed to suffer the more he attended his barber.
Gervinho (Arsenal)
Gervinho’s unusually high forehead is something that a number of African players have dealt with in the past. Taribo West, Sadio Mane and there are many more.
However, none brought as much attention to that fact than Arsenal’s ex winger, who used his longer dreadlocks to hang down the front as a kind of forehead curtain that didn’t quite reach all the way across.
The look was unique and frankly, for me, disturbing. And he is still sporting the look nowadays too.
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