From Mr George Best to Mr David Ginola – five players at the top of their sartorial game.

Today’s football icons are the most style-obsessed dandies in sporting history. These ripped young gladiators – Messrs Aaron Ramsey, Olivier Giroud, Gareth Bale, et al – are the perfect canvas for today’s Saint Laurent blousons and eye-watering Balmain jeans. Whether from Nigeria, Bahia or Essex, today’s footie stars are unapologetically fashion-addicted. Once upon a time, player salaries were capped at a dismal £12 a week. In the early 1960s, the restrictions were lifted and, within a short period of time, players had disposable income and could squander their money on booze, cars, and… drumroll… clothes. Instead of getting hitched and hanging up the net curtains, they collectively jumped into the Ford Cortina of life and headed for the nearest boutique.

Messrs David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are the contemporary icons of footballer fashion. But who came before them? With the World Cup kicking off this week, we offer you five vintage footballers whose style has stood the test of time.

With the philosophy “retaliate first”, hardman Mr Mike Summerbee played a huge role in Manchester City’s dominance during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He is pictured, circa 1967, driving his Volvo P1800 – the model driven by Sir Roger Moore in The Saint – while popping “Ruby Tuesday” onto the sound system. Lads like Mr Summerbee navigated their way out of post-war austerity Britain with astonishing speed and panache. One minute they were peddling rusty bicycles to training, the next it was fancy motors with dashboard turntables. In a Topical Times annual of the period, Mr Summerbee unfurled his commitment to a stylish life: “See me roll up in my midnight blue three-litre Daimler saloon. Out I’ll step, wearing one of my expensive suede coats. Cut in the French style I like so much.”

In the late 1970s, there were only maybe 50 black players in the professional British game. Then, suddenly, there were three more: in the 1977-1978 season, Mr Laurie Cunningham (pictured), along with Messrs Brendon Batson and Cyrille Regis, joined West Bromwich Albion. The media vigorously embraced this powerful moment of black pride. The fans? Not so much. “What shocked me when I joined West Brom was the volume,” recalled Mr Batson when speaking to the The Guardian decades later. “The noise and level of the abuse was incredible… We’d get off the coach at away matches and the National Front would be right there in your face. In those days, we didn’t have security and we’d have to run the gauntlet.” By 1982, when this picture was taken, Mr Cunningham, one of the coolest cats to ever drive a Porsche, was living in Spain and playing for Real Madrid. He was the first British player to achieve this honor. Seven years later, he died in a car crash aged 33.

In his oversized 1980s tobacco-colored double-breasted suit, Arsenal great Mr Tony Adams looks very 2018. His fearless memoir, Addicted, gives a stark portrait of an era when many players were going off the rails. It also includes many insightful recollections of his fashion odyssey. Of the 1970s, he writes: “When the mod revival began in the late 1970s, I bought a parka coat and Hush Puppies and thought I looked really smart. It always appealed to me more than the rocker and greaser stuff.” Of the 1980s: “I was a soul boy, into jazz funk, which was not very fashionable out in Essex.” And of the 1990s, when serving the four-month sentence he received after smashing his Ford Sierra into a wall while drunk (of which he served 57 days): “Then I was issued with prison wear: dark blue jeans, which I later doodled on with a pen, a sky-blue T-shirt, a tatty woollen pullover which was too tight, blue socks and black plimsolls.” Over time, Mr Adams turned his life around: he now has an MBE, a coaching career and his own statue at the Emirates Stadium.

Footballers are a good-looking bunch, but some are so romance-novel handsome that they score a L’Oreal hair-modelling gig. Enter French international player, turned actor and pundit, Mr David Ginola. As former England midfielder Mr Chris Waddle put it in 1995, “Men will love his skills and women his looks. He could end up being popular enough to replace Robbie Williams in Take That.” Monsieur Ginola appears acutely aware of his beauty, even in middle age. On 14 May 2017, after Tottenham Hotspur played their last game at White Hart Lane, Mr Ginola, now a short-haired silver fox, was invited to join the heart-warming parade of former Spurs legends at the post-game ceremony. He was the only man who strode into the roaring historic stadium while filming himself.

In 1970, a black-clad Mr George Best, accessorised with his MGB GT, posed proudly outside his eponymous boutique. At the time, he was one of the most recognised men in England. Mr Best loomed so large in the pop-culture scene that he was dubbed The Fifth Beatle. He brought a playful hedonism to the football landscape, which, combined with his magical skills and his innate stylishness, made him forever a folk hero. He made it OK to care about clothes and to drink champagne, as opposed to beer. Along with the various boutiques that he owned, Mr Best opened his very own nightclub, named Slack Alice. With his love of style, and his interest in business, he was the canary in the coalmine for the ultimate football style icon Mr David Beckham. Mr Beckham, who would also wear the number seven shirt for Manchester United – ditto Mr Cristiano Ronaldo – was still a twinkle in his dad’s eye when this picture was taken.

Saturday Night Fever Pitch (Laurence King Publishing) by Mr Simon Doonan is out now

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