You may have noticed that several footballers have benefitted from hair transplants.
There are many reasons for this trend.
The most obvious is the former England football captain Wayne Rooney. He is probably the most famous hair transplant patient in the UK.
Wayne started losing his hair in his late teens and has had at least two FUE (follicular unit extraction) procedures to fill in his bald spots.
Lots of footballers have been inspired to go under the knife by Waynes’s example. The former Manchester United star has never made any secret of the fact that he has had helped with his hair and he has inspired thousands of men – particularly young men – to have procedures. Good for Wayne.
The other reason so many footballers seek help with their hair is because it is important that they look good. As well as the exhorbitant salaries players are paid by their clubs, the best players also earn well from their ‘image rights’ – endorsement deals for boots, shinpads and other sports equipment and collaborations with big sports brands such as Nike and adidas. Clearly a balding star is not going to be as attractive to big name sponsors than a player with a full head of hair – however well they play on the pitch. So players like Rooney have cleverly protected the value of their image rights by getting their hair sorted out.
The third reason many footballers have hair transplants is because they can afford to. They have high levels of disposable income and the cost of the procedure will be a fraction of their weekly wage.
It would wrong to say that hair transplants were beyond the reach of most men an average pay levels. Like most clinics, at Crown Clinic we offer payment plans to help patients fund operations and procedures start at around £5,000.
Common Hair Transplants Favoured By Celebrities
One of the most successful recent celebrity hair transplants has been the former Tottenham and Manchester United star Dimitar Berbatov. The Bulgarian showed signs of advanced male pattern baldness around his temples while he was still playing in the Premiership. Now if you look at fresh pictures of the star, he has a wonderful full head of hair and his bald spots have been covered.
There is no doubt that he has had at least one hair transplant and possibly or two or three given the fullness of the cover. His surgeon is to be congratulated on the work because Berbatov’s hair looks so much better and he has achieved a wonderful natural result.
Berbatov will almost certainly have had FUE procedures. This costs a little more than the more traditional method of hair transplantation, FUT (follicular unit transplantation), also known as strip surgery, where a strip of skin is surgically removed from the scalp to obtain the donor hair.
Celebrity hair transplant patients who have had FUE procedures at Crown Clinic include the former footballer Didi Hamann, model Calum Best, Homes Under The Hammer presenter Martin Roberts and the Gogglebox star Chris Butland-Steed. Crown Clinic’s most famous FUT patient is the TV doctor Christian Jessen.
Around 80% of clients at Crown Clinic chose FUE. It is more popular than FUT because the scarring is less obvious. Most FUE patients are left with red pinpricks where the donor hair is harvested and replanted but these go away after a few weeks. FUT patients have a scar where the strip is removed from the scalp – this is not really visible if you wear your hair long but FUT is not recommended for men who like to wear their hair short or shaved.
Most footballers chose FUE. Berbatov clearly picked an excellent surgeon for his procedure, like Crown Clinic’s Asim Shahmalak. The real skill in hair transplantation is how the surgeon replants the extracted hair. It should blend with the existing hair to produce a perfectly natural result. That is what has happened with Dimitar Berbatov.