Every now and then when I’m at a game, someone will say: “I remember when all 22 players on the field wore black boots.” The implication being those who still wear them are made of stronger stuff than today’s show ponies, who are obviously all far too concerned with what they’re wearing on their feet. I’ve always thought this was nonsense, as well as a little hypocritical. Well, apart from when Nicklas Bendtner first wore pink boots for Arsenal 12 years ago – that was a bit much. But it turns out Bendtner was just ahead of the curve.
In my experience, many who champion the black boot above all others have their own particular footwear fetish, which tends to focus on the regard and upkeep of a certain pair of boots: Adidas World Cups, or their rubber-studded cousin, the Copa Mundial. Proper boots, nod those who wear them.
Seldom has a football boot been so canonised, although it’s no wonder that they are rarely worn by professionals these days. Those spindly laces and thin aglets have never been equipped to last a British winter. And don’t get me started on the boot’s ludicrous tongue, which requires several pegs from the washing line to hold it down for the best part of 24 hours if you want to stop it from flapping up and down your foot like a stranded mackerel.
When I started out in men’s football in the late 1990s, these people would warn anyone who dared to wear coloured football boots; although in hindsight, it sounded more like a wish. You’ll get kicked wearing those, they’d say. And you would. Many saw coloured boots as a personal affront, whereby the only morally correct way to play against the wearers was to wallop them. Those days have long gone. My size-eight white Pumas – a bargain at £12 – went unnoticed when I began wearing them last year at my weekly eight-a-side game.
Some will recall Alan Ball and Alan Hinton wearing white Hummel boots in games back in the 1970s, but it’s only over the last 20 years that coloured footwear has increased in popularity, to the point where it’s black boots which have become a rarity. Purists will be horrified, although probably not too surprised, to learn that black boots were not responsible for many goals in the Premier League last season. Although the colour of boot which scored the most will have them reeling. The answer, with 636 goals, is pink. Golden Boot-winner Jamie Vardy scored his 23 Premier League goals wearing white and pink Adidas, with Danny Ings, Mo Salah and Marcus Rashford also wearing pink. For the record, black boots were responsible for 36 goals.
In hindsight, black boots’ days were numbered as early as 1998, when Martin Keown, a poster boy for the no-nonsense brigade if ever there was one, played Arsenal’s FA Cup final victory in a pair of red Puma Kings. He took things further. During the aftermath of England’s 3-2 defeat to Romania at Euro 2000, Keown joined David Beckham to console Phil Neville, who conceded the decisive late penalty. Only one of that trio is wearing coloured boots, and it’s not Neville or Beckham.
This sent out a clear message: you didn’t have to be a fancy-dan to wear coloured football shoes. Or to be more specific, you could wear coloured boots and kick people. And so the football boot world changed forever. I tried upping the ante at eight-a-side, wearing the fluorescent yellow sock-like boots my teenage nephew has outgrown. The attempt to draw attention to myself failed, with only a couple of colleagues looking toward my feet to ask if I had new boots, before conversation quickly turned to more pressing matters, like congestion on the M27.
Given the changes in colour and weight of football boots over the last 25 years it feels outdated to call them boots at all. Cleats would be a better description. Perhaps, in a further 25 years, the person who approaches me at the game with that knowing look will shake their head at the felt, lit-up moccasin-like footwear the players are all wearing and say: “I remember when real men like Brede Hangeland and Robert Huth wore lime green and yellow and navy leather studded boots.”
• This article appeared first in When Saturday Comes
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