A barber to the stars of football, Sheldon Edwards, also known as HD Cutz, feared his career was over after he inadvertently leaked Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s transfer from Arsenal to Liverpool.
The £35million move in 2017 saw the former England midfielder switch clubs after being repositioned to wing-back by Arsene Wenger. The deal was finalized while Oxlade-Chamberlain was with his England teammates at St. George’s Park, but it was prematurely announced when Raheem Sterling’s barber, Sheldon Edwards, unknowingly filmed the player in his new club’s kit.
Edwards, who counts Phil Foden, Jude Bellingham, Jadon Sancho, and Erling Haaland among his clients, was invited into the camp by Sterling in 2017. After the mishap, he believed his time in the spotlight was up. On Reach’s new Euro Thrash podcast – available on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify – Edwards confessed: “I thought it was over for me in the England camp.”
He continued: “When I was just starting out with social media, I went to the England camp and was like ‘wow, I’m really here’ at St George’s Park.
“My mate Raheem Sterling brought me in there, many years ago. I was new to social media and I was going up the lift and was doing a Snapchat, ‘I’m at St. George’s’ and all that. There was a player at the lift and it was Oxlade-Chamberlain, so I put my phone up, said ‘there’s a player, it’s Oxlade-Chamberlain’.
“I put my phone down, went into the room and security was like ‘make sure you’re not putting that thing up’. I went into the room with Raheem and then Oxlade-Chamberlain comes in saying ‘what did you do?!’.
“I was the one who announced that he had signed for Liverpool. At the lift, he was wearing the Liverpool kit, but he was still at Arsenal.
“I didn’t know. These are the sort of things that happened over time which helped me to understand the position which I am in and the responsibility I’ve got for the players. Trust, respect and understanding is what they expect of me and they know that I have got their back.
“I thought I was finished. I did not sleep that night. I thought I was going to be banned from the England camp forever. I was on the come up and I thought this was the come down and I’m finished. They gave me the reassurance afterwards and Raheem told me it was cool and helped me get over that. I was gone, I was stressed.”
Edwards is currently launching his HD Cutz Academy, and has become one of world football’s premier barbers, tending to a number of England’s Euro 2024 stars in their camp in Germany.