The average TV viewer will miss it, but many football players are struggling with their shoes this World Cup. One puts in a ‘stiff’ sock, the other an insole and there are even known cases of players who cut a hole in the back of their kicks. More space for the heel ensures more comfort, is the idea.
“You can hardly imagine it,” says Claire Bloomfield, top woman of the European Club Association (ECA), the organization that represents the interests of European professional clubs within the European football association UEFA. “But almost all football boots on the market today are designed for men. Women therefore wear shoes that do not suit them. How sad is that?”
Bloomfield should know. The ECA conducted a lengthy investigation into the footwear of 350 players at European clubs. Not only were detailed questions asked, but the women also received a 3D scan to see which last fits which foot.
The report released last month sent a small shock wave among experts. 82 percent of the players reported pain while playing. One fifth had adapted shoes to reduce complaints – often with an insole, but sometimes also with a ‘heel hole’. A quarter felt that shoe manufacturers do not pay enough attention to the needs of the women who wear their product.
In a rare case, manufacturers (read: sponsors) are willing to adapt an existing shoe to the wishes of a football star. In most cases, players wear a men’s shoe in a smaller size, whether or not adjusted by themselves. In the past, those sizes did not exist and women had to wear children’s shoes of poorer quality, but Puma and Adidas, for example, catered to their female clientele by making smaller sizes, but still men’s shoes.
“You don’t solve the problem with that,” says Danish Katrine Okholm Kryger. She did PhD research into football boots for men and was increasingly surprised that nothing is known about shoes for women. Women are generally smaller and lighter, she says. They are less powerful and have smaller feet. “You have to take all these factors into account when you design a football shoe for women.”
Less chance of injuries
Nike claims to have found the solution with the recently launched Phantom Luna. It took two years to develop the shoe, which would be the pinnacle of innovation in women’s products. According to Nike, the Phantom Luna is tighter around the ankle and includes a new circular stud pattern at the toes to help with traction and mobility. The shoe also has larger ones touch zones for the somewhat smaller female foot. All in all, the wearer of the shoe moves and turns more easily on the field and is less likely to get injured.
Jules van de Veen, who consults many football players of all levels as a sports physiotherapist and foot specialist at the Papendal sports centre, falls silent for a moment when the new Nike shoe is discussed. The manufacturer is very good at development, he says, and they are sincere in their efforts to improve products. But he also thinks it is “a bit pretentious” and you can wonder, he says, whether Nike would also have come up with the shoe if the number of football players had not increased exponentially in recent years. “If it had been purely about development, they would have come up with it sooner.”
Van de Veen finds it strange (and he is not the only one) that the manufacturer also focuses on men with the shoe in its communication. “Although I can imagine that a thirteen-year-old boy with an immature foot and a lighter build than an adult footballer can also benefit from the shoe.”
It is certain, he says, that football players run different risks than football players. “For example, the risk of anterior cruciate ligament injury in a woman is three to five times greater. That has to do with anatomy. Women land less on the forefoot than men.”
Proper research on the link between football boots and injuries in women has never been done and everyone you talk to chooses their words carefully. “Based on what we know now, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a connection,” said Bloomfield of the ECA. “But the quality of the research into this must be high, otherwise the impact of the results will be less.”
Researcher Okholm Kryger: “We know that certain injuries occur more often in women than in men. Several factors contribute to this and footwear is one of them.”
Free in the head
Jill Roord, under contract with Nike, is the only Dutch player at the World Cup to wear the new Phantom Luna. She switched shortly before the tournament, but was not ‘forced’ by Nike to wear the shoe through a sponsorship deal, an insider says.
“Do you consider women as unique athletes or as short men? That is the question”
“Wearing a football shoe is an individual matter,” says Karin Thijs, involved in the women’s team as a sports doctor. “But it is especially important that footwear does not prevent players from being free in their heads and that it ensures that they can fully focus on their sport. We all try to dot the i’s and cross the t’s and that includes good footwear.”
When asked why a women’s football shoe is only now on the market, she says: “In football, the focus has long been on men – still. Just look at the injury prevention programs, which are mainly aimed at men. There, too, things will have to change. Those shoes are the start of a long development to make our sport women-specific.”
Katrine Okholm Kryger believes that developing a good football boot for women is ultimately about respect. “Do you view women as unique athletes or as short men?” she says. “That is the question.”
The FIFA World Cup will take place in Australia and New Zealand from July 20 to August 20. The Netherlands will play against Portugal on Sunday morning at half past nine
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper on July 22, 2023.