The majority of us don’t have access to either an agent who can gift us the new £300 Nike Magistas quicker than Messi destroyed Arsenal’s Champions League hopes again this year, or that sort of money to spend. Therefore, maintaining the one pair of boots we have a season and keeping them in optimum condition to bang those goals in consistently on hungover Sunday mornings is vital. So here are five things that we should not do, but always do anyway, to our boots in order to keep them in pristine condition.
- Post-match shower
It may seem like a good idea, but bringing your boots into the shower with you after a game to clean them is not all that clever. Yes, it may save time and do a job, but don’t let your poor football boots pay for your laziness. Getting the insides wet, specifically the inner sole, will significantly weaken the boot and eventually may cause part of it to erode. Even the high-end boots where the soles are made out of more durable material will eventually become damaged by doing the old ‘shower clean’ after matches. For those also asking: can football boots go in the washing machine? Yes, they can, but for the same reason we wouldn’t recommend it!
2. Forgetting to clean
Having gone on for perhaps four sentences too many about not having your football boots as a shower buddy, we’re are now going to tell you to clean them regularly. But no, we’re not sending you mixed signals, we are sending you valuable wisdom. After every match that you play on grass, take five minutes out of your time lifelessly scrolling through Facebook to give your boots a proper wash- we’re talking old school bucket of water and a cloth. Why clean football boots though? Essentially, it is to get rid of all of the mud, because if mud remains on the boot and then dries, it can reduce flexibility in the boot as it solidifies which longer-term could erode part of the boot.
3. Studs on tarmac
We’re not saying that you walk down the street on the way to Tesco in your old Adidas Predators, but there will be times when you may be wearing them to or from a game and you walk over some tarmac. Try to avoid this as much as possible! This is because the more contact that the metal studs make with the hard concrete, the more damaged they will become. Think of it like this, every time a stud makes contact, a minor part of it is grazed off. If this happens frequently then you’ll eventually end up with eroded/sharpened studs fit for creating a three-inch deep whole in Jimmy the striker’s leg. Apart from the danger aspect of it, it can also mean that you are not as balanced on that foot and ultimately can cause blistering.
4. Giving your football boots a ‘quick bang before we get into the car’
If your mum never said: ‘just give them a quick bang before you get in’ to you when you were getting back into the car, then you… may not have had an obsessive mum who cared too much about the cleanliness of her car. Lucky! But for the majority of us who did, banging our boots together after matches to get rid of the mud was routine. However, this again has the same effect as the studs-on-tarmac issue. Think about it, it is not just us being pedantic. When you’re hurtling those boots together with colossal force and the impact is being made by studs from one boot touching studs from the other boot, you risk seriously eroding them. Instead, just make sure that stud meets the mud in between the other studs when colliding with the other boot. Yes, there is indeed a technique to it!
5. Tighty (not so) righty
Obviously, the classic pre-match check of the studs is obligatory in any Sunday league warm up. Ensuring that studs are tight enough to not fall out mid slide-tackle is pivotal, however tightening them too much can lead to greater problems. If they are too tight, then they will cause blistering on your feet, as the tighter they are, the higher they get meaning the closer they are to the sole of your foot. They can even cause the boot to become miss-shaped, as they are in an unnatural position, thus forcing the boot to accommodate it in an alternate place.
So there you have it. Not following these tips may not cause your boots to completely disintegrate, but we guarantee that if you stop repeating these same mistakes, the life-span of your footy boots will be that little bit longer.
