Manchester United opened the season with a 1-0 house defeat against Arsenal last weekend, taking Ilett and his commitment to the starting point. A cut could Be possible soon. The next time of United presents a series of smaller clubs, starting with Fulham on Sunday followed by Grimsby Town and Burnley. But the perennial power and rival Manchester City wait on the road against a crash of houses with Chelsea.
There is a great probability, except for annoying victories, Ilelett will wear a dark and thick hair shock to autumn. He says that his girlfriend doesn’t care.
“She likes the King’s Guard look,” he joked.
Ilalet says the bet emerged to a large extent of boredom. He moved out of Oxford, England, Castellón, Spain, in November 2023 to be closer to his girlfriend’s family and raise his 14 -month -old daughter. Without relatives or friends near and between works, he entertained Manchester United games.
But on October 6, after four consecutive games without victories, he decided that something should be done. Something that really spoke with the football gods and helped recover the club in a positive light.
Then Ilett dumped and hit “post” on Instagram.
“On the day 1 not to cut my hair until Man United wins five games in a row,” he said in the video. “Aston Villa today. I don’t feel confident.”
The team drew 0-0 that day and the rest is history.
The rules of the challenge were simple: being victorious in five competitive games in a row. That meant that any Premier League game, the Europa League or the National Cup counted, while the friendlies and exhibitions did not.
During the first 10 days of the challenge, he said, he noticed that “some people were interested.” Slowly it began to build at 2,000, then 10,000 and then a month later 50,000. As of August 20, “The United Strand” has 227,000 followers.
“I didn’t expect him to continue so long. I thought it would be a few months,” he said. “A little funny thing to do. Make some United fans laugh at a difficult time, and then that would be, everything would end. We would return to normal, back to winning forms. But it hasn’t worked that way.”
Some of his followers are Manchester United fans who support him during this difficult time. Others, he said, oppose fans who support losses to keep growing hair.
“In general, I have been very happy. It has been very positive. Everyone has been very friendly, very supportive and everyone is behind me, I suppose, supporting me,” he said. “There are even many rival fans. I have had some Liverpool fans who say: ‘You are the only man United fan that I like.’
Ilelett’s videos are typically less than 10 seconds and simply indicate the challenge rules with the current day number. The real fun, however, is how you use your hair. It has become so long that you are now taking requests on how to show it.
Some days will be poofy while others will be curly or heterosexual. Some days will submerge it in a pool or put it in colorful hair ties. The most recent request is to get articles from your hair: a recent video makes it play with multiple restless spinning.
Ilett says that while enjoying his new fame, he is ready for him to finish. Although there is a very small possibility that he never cuts his hair again, he sees that the challenge ends this year.
“I am really optimistic that this season will happen,” he said. “Now, if you ask me in a year, if it has not happened, then maybe I am not smiling so much. I am quite positive, quite optimistic that we are going to have a good season this season, and at some point those five victories will join.”
When his hair is cut, he intends to donate his locks to Little Princess Trust, a beneficial organization based in the United Kingdom that makes wigs for people diagnosed with cancer.
Even more incentive for the bet to be completed.
“I feel that I have come so far now,” he said. “I have to see it until the end, for a long time I can carry.”
Although Manchester United has won the best division of England 20 times, tied with Liverpool for most history, the last United Championship arrived in 2013. The team made movements this low season that believes that it will return to containment. After lending Marcus Rashford to Barcelona, the club brought the strikers Matheus Cunha de Wolves and Bryan Mbeumo de Brentford. His latest incorporation can be the most crucial: striker Benjamin Šeško from RB Salzburg, considered among the best young score talents in the world.
Joe Prince-Wright of NBC Sports said that manager Ruben Amorim knows “an end between six and a strong cup race is the least United needs to achieve this season if they are going to show the people who are back on the right path.”
“United has been going through this reconstruction during most of the last decade, but it still feels very similar to the current painful reconstruction of New England patriots after Bill Belichick’s Gloria and Tom Brady days,” said Prince-Wright. “But there is hope that United can be competitive, and if they can stay defensive, they now have the correct combination of players and characters, in attack to win games.”
Hopefully five of them consecutive, for the good of Ilett.
He said that if the team wins four, he would love to experience the final victory in person in Old Trafford.
“It will be like the champions League final for me. It will be crazy,” he said. “If we arrived at four victories in a row, and I went to the fifth game and I was seeing it and we did not win, I think it would be the most heartbreaking moment of my whole life.”
