- Greetings, GQ.
I am Alexi Lalas.
And today, let's take a look back in history
at some of the most iconic hairstyles in soccer.
[upbeat music]
I think soccer lends itself to an aesthetic.
There are no pads.
Obviously, there's no helmets.
You go out there in front of people
and they are looking at you
and they want to be wowed.
Show your personality out there.
It's not just about kicking a ball.
Let's take a look now at some of the hairstyles
that we have seen over the years
that have made these players
almost as famous for what they are doing
on their head and their face
as what they're doing with their feet.
The great David Beckham.
It's almost as if every few months he changed it up.
And he kept us guessing.
You never knew what it was going to be.
Very good looking man,
so it really doesn't matter what he does.
When David Beckham first came out,
it was much more of a '90's boy band type.
And then he started to branch out,
started to get into fashion.
There were times where he would go big,
huge ponytail up top,
that type of stuff.
We've seen the cornrows.
David Beckham, I think, has two mean eras.
The mohawk.
And anytime you do a mohawk,
you're just giving off the vibe
that you don't want to be messed with.
And then the other one was completely shaved.
He understood that he was a performer,
that this was entertainment.
It made him not just an incredibly popular soccer player,
but one of the most popular people
and famous people on the earth.
Neymar is one of the great players in history.
He is known for his flare, his creativity,
but he's also known for ever-changing hairstyles.
You can't even keep track.
He surprises us.
He uses color as well as cut to make them unique.
I think that players,
whether it's Neymar or anybody else,
recognize that they are in the entertainment industry.
And that's not a pejorative.
Their aesthetic, their costume is very, very important.
The great Marouane Fellini, the Belgian.
Six foot something.
And then he must have been 6'7"-ish probably with the hair.
Hair can be used for intimidation.
A player like Fellaini would come on the field
and he was large just in general.
But then he became larger than life.
He could harness the power of the hair, if you will.
And I think he became very, very comfortable with it,
and almost needed it to a certain extent to survive.
It looks like he just rolled outta bed.
Don't be fooled.
There was plenty of maintenance
that went into making it look like that
in order to get on the stage with that glorious do of his.
Gareth Bale.
A wonderful player, incredible career.
Will be in the World Cup captaining Wales
this November and December in Qatar.
The hairdo that I associate with him the most
is the ponytail bob.
I'll tell you what.
Gareth has leaned into it.
It is his go-to.
That's how you recognize him running around the field.
And look, if you find something that works for you,
you keep with it.
You gotta be careful with the man bun.
It can get knocked out of whack very easily on the field.
So, you have to make sure
that it is done correctly before the game begins.
You don't want a haphazard type of man bun.
On the soccer field or off the soccer field,
for that matter.
It may look like it's just an easy thing
up on the top of the head,
but there's a whole lot more to it.
Mario Balotelli.
What do we say about this guy?
Blessed with incredible talent.
He can go a lot of different ways.
I think that that's partly reflected
in the way that he looks.
And this is a guy who has incredible mood swings.
It's part of what makes him a good soccer player.
But it also can get him into trouble.
We're constantly wondering what is he going to do
both on and off the field.
We've seen many different takes on the mohawk.
A much more strict and traditional type of mohawk.
We've seen a much more low-cut type of mohawk strip.
And we've seen multiple strips,
so it'll be kind of multiple mohawk.
I don't even know if that's a word.
I think he recognizes that even though at times
the mohawk gives you a limited space to work,
you can still use it to great effect.
Olivier Giroud.
No matter what he does, his hair does not move.
And even after 90 minutes of playing
and running around and falling and kicking
and heading and doing all that kind of stuff,
there is still not a hair out of place.
It's probably a well-kept
and well-guarded secret from Giroud.
And let's be honest,
the entire country of France is probably keeping it from us.
Giroud at times has complained
that people are focusing in on his looks.
Cry me a river.
Look, he is a wonderful player,
and I think that it comes with the territory, all right?
Blame your parents.
Not only does he have good hair,
but he also puts the ball in the back of the net.
So jealous.
All right, Paul Pogba.
One of the greats when it comes to France.
A World Cup winner.
As well-known for his soccer playing,
he is just as well-known
for the incredible hairstyles that he had.
I bet you he spends a ridiculous amount of money
on the styling of his hair.
It shows an appreciation.
It shows an understanding of the performer that he is.
He's a star.
And the things that he does with his hair
are real works of art.
Whether it's textures, whether it's letters,
whether it's words,
it's really incredible and intricate,
and oftentimes very, very interesting.
The Brazilian Ronaldo.
One of the great players in history.
One of the worst haircuts I have ever seen.
The now infamous, I guess legendary front triangle.
I have no clue what he was doing, what he was thinking,
if he lost a bet.
The only thing that saved him,
he was arguably the best player in the world.
So recently, Ronaldo has said
that this haircut that he had
was a distraction to keep people
from looking at an injury that he had.
All right, fine.
Well, first off, by the way, great distraction.
'Cause nobody looked at anything, okay?
You could have had protruding bone.
So, well done if that was really the case.
That people have tried to and successfully imitated it
has irritated him, evidently.
Well, you know what?
You created the monster.
So if anybody's at fault, it's you, Ronaldo.
Carlos Valderrama, a Colombian legend
and a legend when it comes to soccer hair.
This Sideshow Bob-type of plume
that just emerges out of this head.
Not only do you have to get past this crazy hair,
but then you have to get past this player who is so good.
I think ultimately when you are choosing a style,
a hairstyle as a player,
the one that you settle on
should be the one that most represents you.
And I think Carlos Valderrama,
his hairstyle was perfect for him.
He was a man of the world.
A kinder man you will never meet.
Roberto Baggio, Italian legend.
And a legendary ponytail.
Divine ponytail.
This is a man who is revered by Italian soccer fans.
This rat tail-type of do that he has
became iconic,
and it was just a continuation of the mullet that he had.
He was comfortable in the way that he looked.
They didn't care what anybody else thought or said.
This was who Baggio was in that moment in his life.
Djibril Cisse.
He has that rare combination
of both hair and facial hair.
I don't know if he does it himself,
but the results were spectacular.
Whether it's the color of a close-cropped mohawk,
the facial hair, the handlebars, the chin missing,
all of those different things.
The blonde half-beard is a work of art.
And he used the entire canvas.
That takes an artist.
All right, Giovanni Simeone.
What the hell?
Simeone is a son of a legendary coach and player.
We all know that kids rebel.
You're gonna do things at times to tweak your parents,
to tweak your dad.
But this.
If this is not you paying off a debt,
then something is really, really wrong.
He went with it and he owned it,
and he went out there on the field with it.
So, way back in the 1900's,
in the previous century when I was running around
before many of you were even born,
I had a whole lot more hair.
I grew up idolizing musicians,
in particular '80's musicians.
The aesthetic in the '80's was everything.
I knew from a very young age
that I was in the entertainment business,
that I was a performer,
that I was wearing a costume.
The reality is that this was simply an extension
of who I was.
I was incredibly comfortable
in this character that I was playing.
And any good character needs a good costume.
So two years before the World Cup in 1994,
we had a coach named Bora Milutinovic.
He was famous for testing his players.
I came into camp and I had real long red hair.
One night, his assistant, Bora's assistant
came up to me and said,
"Alexi, Bora wants you to cut your hair."
And I was so pissed off.
The reality is he was testing me
and he wanted to see how badly I wanted to be on that team.
And I cut my hair really, really short.
I kept the hair in a bag.
I put it in my room.
I went down to the meeting.
Bora came walking in.
He looked at me.
Didn't say a word, just nodded his head.
Bora, never for the next two years
said a single word about my hair.
And I grew it all back even longer.
I passed the hair test.
I kept my hair in a bag for years and years.
I still have it.
Maybe I'll send it to the Hall of Fame one day
if they'll take it.
One of the things that I love about the game of soccer
is that it enables you to express yourself.
There are kids that grow up watching and saying,
"Not only do I want to play like that player,
"but I want to look like that player."
Hair has been, is, and will continue to be
a huge part of the game of soccer.