Saturday 30th October 2021
“You have beautiful hair”
Bavaria and the curious hairstyle posse
Posted by Ben Redelings
In autumn fifteen years ago, FC Bayern Munich got into serious trouble. Schalke faced the fourth away defeat in a row and slowly all the usual means to improve the situation were exhausted. But then coach Felix Magath had a revolutionary and curious idea!
“Hairdressers should help Magath” was the strange headline at the beginning of November 2006. Bayern were then as now in a mood of alarm. Things didn’t go as they should in the league and Felix Magath was already heavily counted. How dramatic the situation actually was for the coach was shown by the fact that both Hoeneß and Rummenigge hadn’t said a word in public about the team and their coach for days and weeks. Quite a few observers of the association rated the vow of silence as the maximum personal punishment for Magath. And lonely and abandoned, this one came up with some strange ideas. The thing with the hairstyles ultimately only caused people to shake their heads.
Magath had copied the story from the then Chelsea coach José Mourinho. He had his hair cut short with a rasp – and then demanded this from his team. The Portuguese star coach wanted to “openly show his will to win”. The Bayern coach was enthusiastic because he saw a clear connection between “hair length and game performance”. A ridiculous assumption, but Magath tried to prove it with a cross-check – after all, some players in his team wore their hair a little longer.
“Here, many just want to look good themselves”
Claudio Pizarro, for example, had a pigtail, Daniel van Buyten seemed to sacrifice a bucket of gel every morning for his hairstyle and Martin Demichelis liked to let his flowing mane blow openly in the wind. Magath concluded: “You stand in front of the mirror for a long time, smear gel into your hair. Too many people here just want to look good themselves instead of running for others.”
The Bayern coach talked enthusiastically about Michael Ballack, who immediately followed suit with his coach Mourinho at Chelsea: “Ballack shows with his close-cropped hair that he is ready to do something for his club beyond his duties on the pitch. I would like to see a signal like that from my players. ” And indeed: Felix Magath was successful with his advertising. At that time, he was able to convince one actor immediately. Hasan Salihamidzic announced eagerly: “This is really not a bad idea. I have to go to the hairdresser anyway.”
Magath should have recognized from himself – or from some of the biggest players in the football guild – that there is probably no direct connection between hair length and performance down on the green lawn. Rudi Völler (“I’m a realist as far as my hairstyle is concerned”) was also a fan of a man with a mane as a child. He loved Günter Netzer. In contrast to his uncle. Netzer never liked him because of his long hair. And one day when he saw a poster on the wall with the man from Gladbach in Rudi’s children’s room, he just said: “Hang that guy down there …” Völler then yelled back: “No, he’ll stay where he is.” Presumably Netzer later influenced “Aunt Käthe” consciously or unconsciously with his own hair length.
“So off your hair!”
Ben Redelings is a passionate “chronicler of football madness” and a supporter of the glorious VfL Bochum. The bestselling author and comedian lives in the Ruhr area and maintains his legendary treasure trove of anecdotes. For ntv.de he writes down the most exciting and funniest stories on Mondays and Saturdays. Further information on Ben Redelings, his current dates and his book with the best columns (“Between Puff and Barcelona”) can be found on his website www.scudetto.de.
But Bayern also never had any success with re-education attempts with their own players. When the swarm of girls Michael Sternkopf from KSC came to Munich at the beginning of the 90s, Hoeneß said tough: “He has to really grow up with us, has to assert himself. But he can only do that if he changes as a type. So, let’s go the hair! ” And Klaus Augenthaler also saw a need for action: “We have already discussed in the team whether we should cut him off at some point during the night.” They didn’t do that – but even later with shorter hair things didn’t really go any better for Sternkopf.
The hairstyle posse at Bayern finally ended in January 2007 with Felix Magath’s expulsion. But it was also too crazy. After all, without his hair philosophies, Magath had made two doubles in a row. A performance that no coach or club in the league had achieved before. And what about José Mourinho? He also adjusted his hairstyle truths later. He once blasphemed his eternal competitor Pep Guardiola: “If someone enjoys what he does, you don’t lose your hair. He’s got bald. Guardiola doesn’t enjoy football.” But even that is probably not much more than an extremely steep thesis.
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