The new MLS collective bargaining agreement, crafted on the eve of the season, mandates a bump in club salary strictures and significantly raises the wages paid to rookies and other young players. But to veterans of the developmental roster designation, some frugal habits prompted by miserly reserve salaries die hard.
To wit, D.C. United second-year pro Brandon Barklage still cuts his own hair.
“I’ve cut my hair for the last six years, just buzzing, just using the guards and everything,” he explained recently. “It saves a lot of money and time.”
So while some players linger in the United locker room after training sessions to receive medical treatment or conduct interviews, Barklage has taken to providing hair-trimming services to his teammates. He cut Danny Allsopp’s hair at RFK Stadium last week, the latest addition to a growing list of clients—or to use Barklage’s word, “patients”—around the locker room who have been taking note of his work.
“I gave Devon [McTavish] a haircut back in Florida, and Devon was pretty happy with the outcome,” Barklage said. “So Danny saw it and came to me. I have great experience with it, just because I was doing it for seven years. I’ve had a shaved head since I was a freshman in high school.”
Barklage’s playing reputation is growing as well. He’s earned 160 minutes of playing time in the United midfield this season even as he negotiates a tricky road back from an anterior cruciate ligament injury to his right knee. He underwent surgery in July and spent most of offseason rehabbing. He’s remarkably levelheaded about the fact that his repaired knee seems to have a mind of its own at this point.
“It’s just about icing it down and keeping the swelling down,” he said. “The first day of practice [last week], I think maybe it was the climate, the weather changing or something, it just swelled up on me. I looked down—it just got really swollen. They took me out of practice and we tried to calm it down a little bit, and it worked.”
If he continues to express that straightforward mentality on the field, head coach Curt Onalfo will find it difficult to trim him from the starting XI.
