Mat Kendrick column: Steve Bruce is right to call for study into the safety of modern football boots
Sep 21 2010 by Mat Kendrick, Birmingham Mail
WHEN I heard Steve Bruce was moaning about The Boot last week I wondered why the former Birmingham City boss should be criticising his cracking old local at Lapworth on the outskirts of Solihull.
He wasn’t. It turns out the Sunderland gaffer was actually raising genuine concerns about the state of the modern football boot and I agree with him about contemporary players’ footwear.
This might sound like a nostalgic rant usually reserved for the light-hearted Jumpers for Goalposts section on this page. But this is much more serious.
With his own striker Fraizer Campbell joining a casualty list that also includes Bobby Zamora and Antonio Valencia, Bruce is right to question the correlation between the design of today’s boots and a spate of severe, high-profile Premier League injuries.
Added to the fact that state-of-the-art surfaces nowadays seem to have far less give in them than previous pitches, Bruce is speaking sense in calling for a scientific investigation into the safety of boots. Bruce’s bugbear seems to be the blades that have replaced traditional studs on the soles.
Designed to give extra grip there is debate over whether this is contributing to serious injuries when players’ feet are planted in the turf and have no room for manoeuvre upon impact – causing the irresistible force versus the immovable object effect.
