Since David Ginola first insisted that he was ‘worth it’ with a swish of his hair over a decade ago, Football has been the sport of the well-groomed man. Whilst David’s Samson-like mane hasn’t quite caught on in the UK (the Spanish and Portuguese national teams seemed to have received the message loud and clear), we’ve seen a long decade of die hard football stars who’re modelling themselves less on John McLane than they are with L’Occitane.

If David Ginola was the pioneering industrialist of gentleman footballers, the more sensibly pronounced David Beckham was the salt of the earth union man who had the layman throwing Molotov cocktails of imitation aftershave when the revolution came. Probably the most popular professional footballer of the last decade, his name has amassed significant brand power. If you were trying to sell clothing, health and fitness products and perfumes or cosmetics to men, David Beckham was top of your list of possible celebrity names if you wanted to succeed. Beckham even launched his own line of fragrances.

Amongst his various successes, David Beckham made it socially acceptable for even the most aggressive cave-dwelling man to have massages, facials and eyebrow treatments. But now he’s part of the American crew, David Beckham is something of a lost cause to the march of the well groomed football loving man. Not to fear though, because the word on the street (or rather in the even less reputable ‘Sun’ newspaper) is that Premiership footballers will again be flogging us tubs of Elemis and other brilliant grooming products. Beckham hit the strike home, now it’s the turn of the defence to keep the scoreline in favour of the well-groomed gent. Sunderland’s Anton Ferdinand and West Ham’s Danny Gabbidon have funded a new venture called ‘New Era Men’ to the tune of £60,000 each, with the view of having a male grooming spa in every city in the UK.