Anyone who has ever been to the hairdresser’s will know that the hairdryer treatment has the ability to be quite pleasant, resulting in warm air being blown on you gently whilst the hairdresser looks to put your hair into some sort of style.
Meanwhile, footballers that have fallen foul of the hairdryer treatment will be quick to tell you that it is anything but a positive, usually involving a manager shouting and screaming in the faces of their players in order to try to get them to perform better.
Whilst we know that such treatment rarely results in improved performances, that doesn’t stop it from happening.
A Venting of Feelings
The best managers in the world of football will be good at several things, with tactics being amongst them. Another thing that they will usually excel at is their man-management skills, being able to get their message across to their players in virtually every circumstance. Of course, sometimes even the very best managers will find what their players are doing to be an extremely frustrating and annoying thing, which can occasionally boil over when they go to express those feelings in the dressing room. This will invariably lead to them screaming and shouting at their charges.
This became known as the ‘hairdryer treatment’, thanks to the fact that it would see the manager so close to their players, venting their feelings, that the players would feel the hot breath close to their faces. The best managers will look to pull out the hairdryer treatment rarely, given the fact that doing it on a regular basis will almost inevitably result in it losing its power. Those at the very top will also know which players such a treatment will get the best out of and which ones will end up going into their shell as a result. Each player will need to be handled carefully, but the ‘hairdryer treatment’ tends to be aimed at everyone.
At least he’s come out & admitted his stupidity. I bet Slot & and the team gave him some hairdryer treatment.
Isak in for Palace nowBBC News – Hugo Ekitike: Liverpool striker’s sending-off was ‘stupid, not smart’, says Arne Slot – BBC Sport
www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba…— Klopplife 🏴 (@klopplife.bsky.social) Sep 24, 2025 at 13:39
Although it is commonly the team manager that pulls out the hairdryer treatment, it can sometimes be administered by the captain to their teammates. If the captain feels as though the people that they’re playing alongside aren’t putting enough effort in, they can let them know as much in no uncertain terms. That being said, the manager is usually the one that looks to bring out the ‘hairdryer’, with one of the best known exponents of such a technique being Sir Alex Ferguson. The Scot even took things too far from time to time, but the results he produced were unarguable.