Note: This article was originally published in @Vice, by Cliff Martin and by Chen Zichao.
Overall, football is not a cool place at all, and it has nothing to do with the hipster (literary hipster) crowd today. Of course, there are some occasional exciting exceptions, but they all have a cool side: Munirio, for example, while pampering his Chelsea captain John Terry, also loves Todd Terry's music – but, however, his favorite song is Bryan Adams's "This Time", and it's all over. Let's talk about another temperamental Klopp, who led Dortmund to be very innovative and forward-thinking, and seems to have revealed some kind of "football hipsters" miracle, but he himself is a devout Christian and heavy metal fan, which is hipster's taboo.
These are old people, and for those young players who have a lot of cash and time, they are not much better. Because they're in a relatively traditional environment, they really don't have anything to do with "cool" at all – the Spanish national team members still like the Band Kasasabian, Tottenham defender Fertonghen is still reading Dan Brown's books, and even the more famous superstars are dressed like small-town nightclub PR. If you look at the photos of The Manchester United generals going out to party last year, you can see that I am not exaggerating at all, the taste of football has always been stale, basically the aesthetic system of the 70s.
Today, when football is in an aesthetic dilemma, in the midst of these poignant and weak rock bands, jeans, and airport readings, there is finally a player who stands up and sticks his head into the circle of hipsters to see it - he is Liverpool's Daniel Sturridge.
In addition to being the main striker of the England team, Sturridge is a young man who lives today and understands the current state of contemporary culture. From the most unscored Chelsea street hustlers to the West Coast Kanye West outfit, I've been closely following Sturridge's transformation into his personal temperament. And not long ago, he also posted a photo of himself with Banks (Los Angeles female singer) on Twitter.
Mingling with the big stars at the Pitchfork festival is just the beginning for Sturridge. I gradually discovered that he gradually became extremely interested in gorgeous Yeezy suits, tweeting about food photos, and dating models on The Vogue covers, and started making beats himself... These are typical hipster lifestyles. Of course, you might say that Welbeck's hairstyle is not bad! But apparently, Sturridge's whole life was a bit cooler. I'm not saying that this suggests that Sturridge is about to actually enter the fashion world, but I mean: it's been too long since the last time I saw Manchester United's Phil Jones post a photo of himself with Swedish electronic music group Swingish House Mafia on Instagram.
You may not think Sturridge looks so cool, but anyway, the last time we mentioned the intersection of football and the popular youth culture of the day, I'm afraid it's going back to the days when George Best and Mick Jagger were hanging out on the streets. Although we still love football, and although the "cool" thing has become more and more commercial, the sensitivity of football players in this regard is too low, even less than that of rugby players with low looks.
Despite having a lot of youth and wealth that can be consumed, why do these young football players still seem so dirty? I think in any way, footballers are to some extent deprived of the social and social experience that young people of their age should have. From an early age, they enter closed training camps and live semi-monastic ascetic lives promoting dedication. At the same time, we are making all kinds of mistakes that young people often make in the social tide, and in this way, we form our own unique tastes and values – which is difficult for football players to do.
Sure, they can (and do) go to nightclubs, but they can't really (although they are) drinking, and they definitely can't touch any medicines (ditto) – so a place like a nightclub is just a place for these athletes to achieve what little personal indulgence is needed: to exist for sex. To put it mildly, footballers can't drive "boogie", but they can go to bed. So for them, a nightclub or something is just a kind of physical trading market without any soul meaning. Nobody cares what kind of music is playing in it, everyone is just busy looking for the part of their social experience that they're missing. There is no doubt that this attitude towards gender relations will also have a crucial impact on their future married life, and the habit of indulgence will be formed – as Crouch and Chamac experienced, there is clearly something wrong.
But not everyone's holidays are filled with barbecue parties and fights to wear green hats, and most footballers still have good and simple values when it comes to life – you only need to see through the social media interactions of Brazil international David Luiz that most footballers are just children who don't know anything. They spend a lot of time exercising their bodies, but they don't have enough opportunities to shape their personality. I'm not talking about how stupid they really are, because there are so many examples of this that you can't simply judge them as somehow stunted. These muscular young millionaires lack real emotions, aesthetic culture, and social experience, so that they can only spit out their tongues and grimace when they face the camera.
So it's really hard to know cool, weird, or whatever. Especially when your friends talk about where to go to the show tomorrow, you can only reply "sorry brother, I have training tomorrow"; or when you are faced with a girlfriend who is trying to develop stability with you, you can only say "sorry baby, the coach asked me to focus on set-piece training instead of you". The coach may tell you how to defend the opponent's corner, but will not tell you where to stand in the penalty area in real life, and presumably will not lend you whose mixtape to listen to.
Theoretically, footballers have enough free time to enjoy the afternoons that Ferrari sports cars and Jedi X-Men 2 bring to them, and there are indeed many players who manage to go around the human walls and end up with a complete personality, excellent taste, stable girlfriends and other things that normal people have. But overall, soccer, a professional sport, seems to be more concerned with training players' bodies than helping shape their personalities.
The dark side of the life that the sport brings to professional players is obvious. Worrying post-career nightmares such as depression, bankruptcy, alcoholism and prison sentences haunt these young people who are only in their thirties at their peak. Because for every Michael Owen, it is necessary to work hard to earn money in a limited time, so that more years of life can be guaranteed, otherwise it will go bankrupt and be forgotten.
So I think it's really a good thing that Sturridge grew up to be the first real literary hipster in football, and it has nothing to do with whether you think he's cool or not. He just popped up some of the most normal ideas of ordinary people, posting some timely photos on Instagram. Either way, he's probably the only guy in the whole football pitch who sticks his head out of the training ground to see the world and really gets interested in something. In an era when soccer players wearing polo shirts to sponsor events are all screaming, Sturridge and his big fat black cannon T-shirt with "Fashion Killa" written on it can bring a little light and hope to the circle.
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