7 of Euro 2024’s most beautifully bizarre hairstyles: Kroos, ‘Turkish David Haye’…

We’ve now seen every nation play at least once at Euro 2024, and we’re becoming familiar with footballers who had never entered our consciousness until five days ago. This is what it’s all about. Giddy, we are. Giddy.

International tournaments are always good for a mad hairstyle or two, and we’ve seen a few of them already over in Germany. Nothing quite on the level of Romania’s entire squad in 1998, but the tournament is young, and there’s a long summer ahead.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the more outlandish trims spotted at Euro 2024 so far, starting with Turkey’s King of the Cornrows.

Abdulkerim Bardakci

Cornrows are a statement. Cornrows are even more of a statement if you’re a Turkish centre-half. Abdulkerim Bardakci is a Turkish centre-half who plays his club football with Galatasaray, and the cornrows you see before you are a relatively recent development in the landscape of his hair.

We reckon he’s just about getting away with it, but that is mainly because we exist in a post-Andy Carroll’s cornrows world, so the bar for this kind of thing has been set low enough that your ears would pop on the way back up, were you ever to plunge those depths.

Guy Mowbraw referred to him as the ‘Turkish David Haye’ as Turkey beat Georgia and, well, you can’t really dispute it.

The Turkish David Haye.

Andrei Ratiu

Rayo Vallecano right-back Ratiu moved to Spain at the age of six. He was born literally two days before his compatriots beat England 2-1 at France ’98, which—due to a bet between Dan Petrescu and manager Anghel Iordanescu—meant that the Romanians emerged for the final group match topped with matching yellow-blonde bleached hair. Iordanescu, for his part, had to shave his head.

Ratiu, then, gets a free pass to dye his hair blue and do whatever the f*ck he wants. In fact, everyone on Earth does—life’s too short, do whatever makes you happy.

This particular blue lid isn’t quite doing it for us, but—listen—if you’ve just won 3-0 against the odds at the Euros, you couldn’t care less what we think. Fair play.

Andrei Ratiblue.

Mykhailo Mudryk

On the losing side of that 3-0 drubbing was Chelsea and Ukraine’s Mykhailo Mudryk. If you can tell us what the speedy winger is trying to achieve with this chop, you’re more follicularly knowledgeable than we are.

It’s sort of a very soft blonde Mohican, which, actually, is a great band name. The Soft Blonde Mohicans with their new single, Flatter to Deceive from the debut album Battered by Romanians.

Seriously, lad. Get a normal fade or just Bic it and start again.

Soft blonde Mohican? The highest of fades?

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Murat Yakin

Swiss coach Murat Yakin is an exceptionally European-looking man. A big sweep of mid-length hair, with a lovely silver streak emanating from the epicentre of the sweep. Beautiful. He’ll be hoping his boys in red can go on a winning streak to match his X-Menesque floppy hair.

Sweepy.

Memphis Depay

This one ain’t so much of a hairstyle as a head situation. If you turn up to a high-profile international football tournament in a personalised headband sporting your squad number and the words ‘who cares’, then, f*ck me, you’d better perform.

Depay was underwhelming in the Netherlands’ narrow win over a Robert Lewandowski-less Poland earlier in the week, and he’d better start doing positive madnesses soon, or we’re going to have to insist that he leaves this kind of thing to Allan Saint-Maximim.

Head situation.

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Toni Kroos

At a certain age, you become too old to be shaving a line into your hair. We’re not sure exactly when that age is, but it’s definitely before the age of 34.

Kroos has an under-the-radar weird trim. The bloke has shaved a proportion of his head that amounts to more than a third, but not quite half. He’s then swept over the rest of his relatively longer hair, and shaved a little line, from front to back, along the parting.

Toni, you are one of the all-time great midfielders, but you are also a grown man. Please sort this out before the end of the tournament.

Too far, Toni. Too far!

Federico Dimarco

There are several well-known idioms for futility in Italian: Sei utile come una forchetta nel brodo (you are as useful as fork in the broth), and sei utile come la ‘R’ di Marlboro (you are as useful as the ‘R’ in Marlboro).

(it’s as futile as the hair dye on Dimarco’s head).

At a certain point, one has to come to terms with one’s impending baldness. Sorry, Fede.

The fork in the broth.