Fashion Statements in The EPL

   Back when my son, Scott, was playing for the Medford Strikers, someone busted on parent Bill Gill, about the hiking boots he wore to a tournament game one wet day.  "I never intended to make a fashion statement at a soccer game," Bill replied, knowing he would have dry feet at the end of the game.

   I'm with Bill, but apparently fashion statements are expected by the managers of the English Premier League teams, as reported in today's New York Times.  In this country, baseball managers since Connie Mack's day have no such worries because they and their coaches in the dugout wear the team uniform.  (No one could ever say why that is.  Best explanation I have heard is that unlike the other sports, in baseball the manager and coaches are routinely on the field.)  In hockey and basketball the coaches dress as if they were modeling for GQ but in American football the staff is usually dressed in team shirts.

    The best quote in the article is: “The top clubs all have designers throwing beautiful clothes at them and the whole world watching them, and still so many of them manage to look cheap and nasty,” said Dan Rookwood, style director at Men’s Health U.K. “They look like middle-management insurance salesmen, not multimillionaire leaders of men.”

   I would be in big trouble if I coached in the EPL because when I was coaching I focused on comfortable.  If it was wet I wore waterproof boots.   If it was cold I dressed warmly.  And the most comfortable attire I could find was the warm-up suit.

Coach P with Bridget Claus August, 2007

   But according to Sarah Lyall, who wrote the Times article, "At the bottom of the heap are those whose no-nonsense track suits and warm-up clothes evoke the crabby phys ed teacher who taught soccer at your high school in the 1980s. These men seem to wish they were playing, not standing on the sideline. They are “the ones that style forgot,” said Jessica Punter, the style and grooming editor of British GQ."  And she goes on to mention Stoke City's Tony Pulis, who not only wears a track suit, but, (gasp) a baseball hat.  Well ,that was me.  As any parent whose kid I've coached, and any opposing coach whose team we played knows, my standard uniform was shorts and a Strikers coaching shirt, warm-up suit when it was colder, and always a baseball hat.  Like Bill Gill, I was never there to make a fashion statement.