Man United fan grows hair for a year due to Amorim’s team’s results

Day 1. Day 10. Day 50. Day 100. Day 365?!

The past year has been tough on all Manchester United fans, but for Frank Illet, it really shows. Illet set himself a quirky challenge last October: he wouldn’t cut his hair until his beloved Red Devils won five games in a row.

“I thought it would only go for a few months and be a bit of a laugh,” Illet told ESPN. “It was something to spread humor to Man United fans during a difficult period of time.

“It didn’t feel unrealistic then, because the season before, they had won five games in a row.”

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At the time, United were still managed by Erik Ten Hag and had ended the previous season by winning the FA Cup final against Manchester City. Illet thought that it would be the perfect time to try out the challenge, despite all of the false dawns and inconsistent form the club have managed in recent years.

The 29-year-old boyhood United fan from the U.K. now living in Spain, started the challenge after a 0-0 draw with Aston Villa. He expected a five-win streak to come quickly. Instead, 77 games across all competitions and a change of manager later, it still hasn’t happened. In fact, the most Illet has been able to see in the past year were three wins in a row when Man United beat Rangers, Fulham, and FCSB in late January under current boss Ruben Amorim.

For context, Liverpool — the defending Premier League champions and United’s bitter rivals — have already won five games in a row this season in just over a month (33 days to be exact).

What began with a clean-shaven Illet has turned into a viral spectacle: a bush of hair growing longer and higher with every passing day and every dropped point.

His daily social media updates to more than 700,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok — counting up the days since his last haircut, whether United played that day or not — have turned him into a cult figure and a living, growing monument embodiment of the club’s travails.

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“I’ve had a lot of ups and downs, and the thing is, the sheer amount of it takes so much out of my time,” he said. “The washing, the brushing, the drying, everything takes so much longer than I’m used to.”

Illet’s mood has mirrored United’s fortunes. He was in the stands at Old Trafford to watch his team beat Chelsea 2-1 earlier this season, only to then see them lose 3-1 at Brentford a week later.

Add in the humiliation of a shock Carabao Cup exit to League Two side Grimsby Town, and even his optimism has started to fray.

“I’ve tried to keep positive, I’ve tried to keep optimistic,” he said. “But that was the moment where I thought that I couldn’t find a positive and keep pretending that something would happen.”

Manchester United fan Frank Illet has not cut his hair for a year because the team has not won five games in a row. Instagram

The reaction has not been universally positive. Police are investigating an incident at the Chelsea game in which one fan grabbed Illet’s hair aggressively and appeared to hurl abuse at him. “It was all a bit weird to be honest,” Illet said at the time. “I will always try to focus on the positives and hope that this was just a one-off.”

Despite United’s continuing on-pitch woes, Illet isn’t calling for Amorim to go. While reports swirl about the Portuguese coach’s future, he believes performances haven’t been as dire as results suggest.

“I don’t think changing the manager is certainly the answer,” he said. “I understand completely that people are saying that they want him out because they’re saying the most important thing in football is results.

“I do think there are some positives. We’ve had the most expected goals and shots in the league. There are a few things like that where a few of those goals go in, and we have completely different conversations. I think in the short term, we need good results immediately.”

With more than 30 Premier League games left this season, plus the FA Cup still to come, Illet hasn’t given up hope for his hair.

“We’ll find out together how much longer it can go,” he said with a laugh.

For now, United don’t have a five-game winning streak, though they have just begun a new run following Saturday’s 2-0 win over Sunderland. But Illet’s hair? That’s just about the only thing that has been going strong all year for anyone associated with Manchester United.

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