The south London barber Sheldon Edwards knows footballers who feel as if they haven’t prepared for a game if they haven’t had a haircut. “[It’s] like they left their boots at home; that’s how important the haircut is.” A good cut, he says, can lift a player’s confidence, on and off the pitch.
Take Raheem Sterling. “There was a time [a few months ago] when he changed his haircut,” says Edwards. He was “growing it a bit and he was having a bit of a sticky time at Manchester City”. When Edwards “gave him a new-wave look, a bit of a different fade”, the goals started to roll in, like Samson in reverse. Edwards says his inbox was full of people pleading with him to “please keep this lucky haircut” and while he concedes that Sterling creates his own luck, he likes to “think the haircut is just like an enhancer”.
It is no surprise, then, that Edwards takes his role as unofficial barber to the England football squad – he cuts the hair of Sterling, Jude Bellingham, Jadon Sancho and Phil Foden – very seriously. “I do feel responsibility,” he says.
Away from the national squad, he cuts the hair of so many Premier League players that he has had to give up being a Manchester United fan. He had his work cut out at the recent Champions League final, given he cuts the hair of eight Manchester City players and eight from Chelsea. “Who do I cheer on? I have to stay on the fence.”
But while he may be able to sit on the fence when it comes to Premier League games, international football is a different matter. “It has to come home. The atmosphere, the vibe in the country; when it comes to England, I can’t sit on the fence,” he says. “Although if it was Jamaica against England, I would beg to differ in that situation.”
Edwards is a third-generation barber who cut his teeth at the barbershop in Jamaica that belonged to his grandfather before it was passed on to his father. He was in the shop from as young as two, “probably just catching on to stuff without realising”.
He opened his first salon, HD Cutz, in Clapham Junction, south-west London, in 2016. The name is a nod to his style of barbering: “It is unique. It stands out. It’s got a high definition on it, so the finish of my cuts is next to none.”
It is, he says, his approach that keeps the footballers coming back. “With me cutting hair, it’s a session of fun, laughs and jokes … We share a lot of personal stories to do with family and I must say that most of my clients are like family to me.” If any of them are going through tough times “we share the moment together. We’re each other’s therapy through any kind of situation; it’s a friendly environment where people can unwind.”
That and the fact he clearly understands the importance of hair to young footballers, especially in the sponsor-dominated, social media-oriented world. “Image is everything,” he says. “When I’m cutting them, I know that I’ve got responsibility … I give them the look that will suit them and lift whatever they’ve got going on; it can make a brand look at them in a different way.”
Here, Edwards talks us through some of the cuts he did before the Euros.
Raheem Sterling
For Sterling’s Euros cut, Edwards went for “a low taper – that means we only take away from the sideburn up to the temple, from the temple up to the ears”. Then we “fade it in and leave his hair naturally with a bit of a wavy look on top”.
It was Edwards who opted for the look, rather than Sterling. “Me and Raheem are so close, he literally doesn’t tell me what he needs; I just do what I want to do,” he says. On most occasions, he walks off without checking on Edwards’ handiwork. “I’ll be like: ‘Look at this now,’ feeling proud that it’s really a sharp one today. Normally, he’ll be like: ‘I don’t need to look in the mirror,’ and he’ll walk off – that’s confidence.”
Edwards thinks this cut suits his personality. “We wanted to present him as the person he is,” he says. “He’s such a great person, warm and friendly; he looks after everyone around him and we wanted to portray that in his haircut.”
Phil Foden
Edwards’ work with Foden has perhaps been the biggest hair story of the tournament so far. It started with a text: “Phil messaged me and was like: ‘I need to change my look, man.’ Phil is so shy. I was surprised. I was like: ‘What do you mean you need to change your hairstyle? That’s not you.’”
But Foden came to Edwards with a picture from the internet: “A normal picture [that comes up] if you Google “blond” on your phone. He wanted blond, but a bit dark, like grey-blond.” Edwards went away and studied. “It put a bit of pressure on me. I did the research, I got the right products for him.”
The reaction has been huge. When Edwards gave Foden his blond transformation, posting a picture on Instagram halfway through the dying process, neither he nor the player anticipated the reaction it would elicit. The post garnered 1,500 comments in about seven minutes; the do has since been the subject of press conferences and newspaper articles. “I thought it was going to go crazy, like Ampadu crazy – when I cut the dreadlocks off [Chelsea’s] Ethan Ampadu, that went viral – but it was nothing as big as what Phil Foden did.”
Comparisons to Gazza, who dyed his hair blond for Euro 96, poured in. But the reference wasn’t intentional, with neither realising the echo. But Foden was, says Edwards, excited by the comparison “as a person that really respects older players and legendary players”.
There is now talk that, if England win the Euros, the whole team will follow suit and go blond. If football does come home, Edwards jokes, he is going to be very busy.
Jude Bellingham
“Jude has a low taper with a high top,” says Edwards. “We do the same fade with Jude as we do with Raheem,” then neaten up the top with scissors before moving a sponge in a “a 360-degree motion until it creates all natural curls” on top.
Again, the trust is there. “He knows I know what he wants, so I just start cutting,” says Edwards.
Jadon Sancho
“Jadon goes for a full fade, leaving a little sideburn going down into a little point and then leaving his little moustache and beard,” says Edwards. As with Bellingham, Edwards will then smooth off the top with scissors before using a sponge to bring out the curls.
Unlike the others, Sancho, who has just agreed a transfer from Borussia Dortmund to Manchester United, is “very particular”, only trusting Edwards and one other barber with his hair. “If we’re not available and he’s in Germany, there’s occasions where they put him all over the papers looking a bit rough,” says Edwards, because in those situations “he’d rather not cut his hair – he’d rather ride it out”.