Sports are surrounded by superstition – if you tell me you’ve never met someone who doesn’t wash a jersey until after a season’s over, you’re lying. Players, too, engage in…interesting tactics to ensure their game goes their way. Bleached hair, I’ve always assumed, was one of those superstitions.
As the World Cup continues, we’ll see players here or there with bleach blond hair – but is it good luck, superstition or something else entirely?
It did, actually, begin with the World Cup! Back in the late ‘90s, the Romanian national team all bleached their hair after winning their first two matches. It was supposed to be representative of team spirit in an effort to keep the luck going throughout the rest of the tournament as they competed in France in 1998. But they were eliminated shortly after, so the jury’s out on the “luck” part.
But things like this catch on, which is what we’ve seen happen over the last couple of decades, spreading from the World Cup to your local high school’s varsity team. Today, blond heads aren’t uncommon in undefeated soccer teams across the country, keeping alive a tradition that was born thousands of miles away.
We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for any blond that appears on the pitch as the final four teams compete for the 2022 Cup!