An Ode to Kit Men: Soccer's Unheralded Heroes

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

Ireland had just seen off Bosnia-Herzegovina to qualify for the European Championships when their dressing room was invaded by a caped crusader. "I'm going to France!" cried the 60-year-old, his grinning bald head protruding from a beer-soaked Superman outfit.

The players responded with unrestrained joy. The man in question, Dick Redmond, was not only a trusted member of their inner circle; he was fulfilling a long and noble tradition of zany, behind-the-scenes team-building practiced by professional football's unsung heroes: the kit men.

On the face of it, the kit man's responsibilities are practical and self-explanatory. But anyone who has ever read a footballer's autobiography will understand that the true purpose of the job is not so much functional as it is fraternal. "The kit man is vital," writes Roy Keane in his latest book. "He's almost the hub of everything, a link to everybody. He has to be good-humoured and upbeat. You have to be glad to see the kit man in the morning."

Footballer's books can often self-centred affairs, but any mention of a kit man will invariably be made in a warm, deferential tone – and generally followed by the misty-eyed retelling of some long-forgotten dressing-room prank, often involving the clandestine application of Deep Heat to someone's genitals. More often than not, it seems to be the obligation of the kit man to act as dutiful recipient to such gleeful high-jinks.

In this respect, the section of Dennis Bergkamp's masterful autobiography – Stillness and Speed – in which he takes time out from his cerebral meditation on the nature of the sport to tell the story of how he endeared himself to his new Arsenal team-mates by pulling Highbury kit man Vic Akers' pants down in front of a group of unwitting female visitors, is instructive.

Equally instructive, though, is the preceding passage, in which it's detailed how Akers would unfailingly accompany Bergkamp – who is famously afraid of flying – on his painstaking car journeys to each European away trip. "He keeps you entertained and cooks your meals and you watch movies together, and chat for hours. And he's your best friend at the club."

Regardless of what the many anecdotes might imply, the kit man's role stretches beyond simply acting as a dumb receptacle for underwear-based hilarity. With dressing room alchemy one of the few components of elite-level sporting success that can't simply be exchanged for a large bag of cash, the role of the kit man remains fundamental within the modern game.

Kevin Kilbane's autobiography regularly cites another of Ireland's kit men, Johnny Fallon, as a supportive, sensitive voice at various low points, from his painful debut for the national side to when he was coming to terms with his daughter's Down's syndrome diagnosis. When the former Ireland manager Brian Kerr refers to Fallon as "more sports psychologist than kit man," he speaks a truth than applies across the profession. And in an industry where job retention is at a premium, it is one of the few roles where longevity can still reign.

There are various routes into the role (responsibilities at Swansea are handled by a mum-and-son duo) but Manchester City's long-serving kit man Les Chapman only picked up the sock-iron once he'd packed in a career as a journeyman midfielder, and player-manager of both Stockport and Preston North End. His duties ranged from the purely professional to the very personal: one Christmas Eve he responded obligingly to Antoine Sibierski's request for him to dress up as Santa Claus and pay the hapless target man's children an in-character visit.

Chapman's gifts to the wider world include Mario Balotelli's iconic 'Why Always Me?' T-shirt and his choreographing City's contribution to the short-lived Harlem Shake canon (that's him in the farmer's outfit, bottom left). That, plus the rather gruesome revelation that former bit-part chance-squanderer Valeri Bojinov "used to shave the whole of his body – everything apart from his head and his eyebrows – in the shower." Perhaps mindful of this, Chapman has recently switched to a role on City's media team.

Just across town, Albert Morgan bantered his way through two decades of service at Old Trafford before hanging up the iron alongside Fergie's hairdryer in 2013. Morgan first hit the public consciousness in 1995 with his fumbled attempt to prevent Eric Cantona from implanting his boot in the face of Matthew "Early Bath For You" Simmonds. 13 years later he starred alongside Cristiano Ronaldo in a Nike advert, although his rather wooden performance is perhaps evidence of why the kit man's responsibilities are best kept behind the scenes.

The kit man's unifying personality occasionally extends beyond the dressing room, too, and can be a pleasing reminder of the human element that exists at the heart of an increasingly inhumane business. Nowhere has this been truer than with the story of Neil Baldwin. Baldwin was a Stoke City fanatic, diagnosed with learning disabilities, who got chatting to the club's manager Lou Macari in the early '90s (while working as a professional circus clown, no less) and was subsequently hired on to the back room staff. He spent seven years at the club and fostered a genuinely legendary status in the process. His story was even adapted by the BBC – Baldwin played by leading British thesp Toby Jones – for a drama that won a gong at last year's Baftas.

Similarly touching is the tale of Abel Rodriguez, a Real Madrid-obsessed Mexican cleaner living in California who, having spent seven summers taking leave from his job in order to work unpaid as ballboy during the club's annual pre-season trips to LA, decided to spend his life savings on a plane ticket to Madrid in advance of his team's fixture with Barcelona. He didn't have a ticket to the game.

After being refused entry to Real's training complex, and following five hours spent sat glumly on the pavement outside, he was spotted by Jose Mourinho, who was driving home and recognised Rodriguez from LA. Not only was Rodriguez granted his wish to attend the Clasico, but Mourinho swiftly whisked him out to dinner ("When you're with me in Europe, you don't pay for shit") and set him to work as Real Madrid's kit man for one night only: the following week's decisive Champions League fixture at Old Trafford. Three days later Rodriguez walked out of the tunnel alongside Ronaldo.

Given that Rodriguez had self-confessedly been saving for a holiday with his wife and daughters before hotfooting it to Spain instead, the moral of his story is perhaps murkier than your average heart-warmer. Either way, it shows that, beyond the headlines of mud-slinging and mind games, Europe's superclubs are still run by human beings, capable of the occasional tendency toward warmth and kindness.

The kit man's obligations are not always restricted to off-field matters, either. Former Celtic and Barça legend Henrik Larsson, now manager of Helsingborg in Sweden, was forced into emergency measures last season when both senior goalkeepers picked up injuries ahead of his side's opening fixture. Rather than promote a terrified kid from the under-18s, Larsson decided his 42-year-old kit man Daniel Andersson could do a job – a judgment vindicated with a clean sheet and a valuable point. Cynics might point to the usefulness of employing a former professional 'keeper on the backroom staff, but kit men the world over will recognise the episode as demonstration of the sudden, chameleon-like demands that are placed on football's unappreciated virtuosos.

Andersson's straying into the public eye remains the exception, though. For the most part, the kit man's duties are fulfilled behind closed doors, not so much by looking after the kits – not really – but by looking after morale, working not only as in-house comedian, but counsellor, companion and confidante.

In a world that often seems governed by vast transfer deals and creeping corporate interests, the kit man's enduring significance is maybe best read as testament to the importance of notions like stupidity, fun and happiness. Which, I'm sure you'll agree, is as good a professional goal as any.

It's also a point that feels all the more pertinent right now, as Leicester City seem intent on surfing their tidal wave of high spirits all the way to the most improbable title of modern times. So perhaps when Europe's vultures begin their inevitable circling around the Midlands ahead of the summer transfer window, the man in their sights should not be Jamie Vardy. Or Riyad Mahrez. Or even Claudio Ranieri.

Maybe the question Real Madrid and co. should be asking themselves is: who the hell is washing Leicester's jockstraps?

@A_Hess