The snood nostalgia

There was a time in football where snoods or neckwarmers were trending. It was around 2005, and the pile boomed as pricipal material for sportswear production, cheap and warm. Meanwhile, footballers were starting to use a set of useless accessories and the stylish show off of tattoos was taking the stage, the snood become an iconic object linked to technical players and to a certain feeling of nostalgia for their homeland, because it was always worn by foreigns in England. The snood trend was drammatically ended in 2011 by the IFAB that banned them for the fear of hangign.
If you share this kind of nostalgia for this object you can understand the breathtaking moment when I saw these Nike photos of a new snood prototype.

This alpha version Nike Strike Snood has been exclusively sent to Scandinavian football boot experts Joltter and JayMike from football boot and kit store Unisport, but we have to wait until autumn 2018 to get one. The design of the snood resembles the Bane Mask from the last Chapter of Nolan's Batman, with a shape that covers ears, mouth and the nose. The main difference compared to old snoods is the material: this prototype is made of neoprene that transports sweat away from your body.

At the peak of its trend, the snood raised some arguments in England. It was worn mainly by Latin and African players that in some way were expressing their hate for the English weather always blamed of the Saudade of foreign players playing in England. The first players to wear were Carlos Tevez, Yaya Toure, and Samir Nasri. Subsequently, they were joined by Mario Balotelli and Marouane Chamakh, who gave more and more credit to the machinist thesis that the snoods were objects for soft players. To support this argument there were two English alpha male guys Roy Keane and Sir Alex Ferguson, who banned them from the Red Devils saying "Real men don't wear snoods."

In Italy the main ambassador of the snood was Roma's captain Francesco Totti, that could count also on Twitter account dedicated to snoods. The Totti's passion for snoods was copied by all the technical players in Italy and so every kid of the academy owned one. A part from Totti the snoods were very popular among goalkeepers too, Gianluigi Buffon was a huge fan of it.