who are these famous “hairdressers”?

During the last matches of the group stage, you sometimes hear about the “hairdresser’s match”. But don’t expect to see scalp specialists treading the lawn: the “hairdressers” are the substitute players who, for the duration of a match, take the place of the starters. This happens when a team is already qualified and therefore plays a last game which counts for butter. While the usual holders rest and preserve themselves for the rest of the competition, the replacements are sent to the coal.

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If this expression may seem implausible at first glance, there is indeed an explanation (and even several) behind the funny term “hairdressers”. The substitutes would have been so nicknamed during the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. At the time, while no substitution was authorized during the match, the France team finished third in the competition by only playing 15 of its 22 players. Legend has it that the seven players who did not play a single game cut the hair of the incumbents to pass the time… and therefore became real budding hairdressers.

One, two and three explanations

The expression is also sometimes attributed to Luis Fernandez. The former midfielder for the France team reportedly said during the World Cup in Mexico in 1986 that the substitutes “did not risk altering their brushing” since they didn’t play… and therefore had an irreproachable hair style, like any hairdresser worthy of the name.

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The third explanation is more literary and comes to us from the linguist Gilles Guilleron, who started from the definition of the verb “to style”, which can mean “to beat” in the sense of overtaking, winning over someone. “In football, the hairdressers are the ones who wait to style the incumbents, that is to say, to take their place”he argued in the columns of Parisian in 2010.

You are free to choose the explanation you prefer…

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