How to Buy a Good Pair of Football Shoes

There’s one thing you need to play football apart from football — a pair of football shoes. But the market today is saturated with good, bad, innovative, specialized, and designer football shoes. So how do you choose the football shoes that suit your game and style? You’ll see that it’s more than the looks. Here are the factors you need to consider while buying your next pair of football shoes.

Play Surface

Where you play will naturally determine the type of shoes you buy, so here we go.

Firm Ground (FG)

If you play on firm ground, get shoes that have plastic studs and are made of firm, natural surfaces like natural grass pitches. FG is the most popular stud configuration so you’ll get plenty of options in this shoe type. Note that you should avoid using FG studs on artificial grass as you may lose your right to return.

Soft Ground (SG)

This type of shoe is preferable for soft and muddy pitches, and is used by a lot of professionals. These shoes have 6-8 long metal studs to help with a deeper penetration in the ground. Avoid using SG shoes on hard or artificial pitches or you’ll get injured.

Artificial Grass (AG)

This shoe configuration is made specifically for playing on artificial surfaces. It has more and shorter, hollow studs for an even grip without straining your joints and knees.

Turf (TF)

These shoes are designed for the small-sided version of the game. They work well on water or sand-based artificial grass pitches. You can recognise them by their soleplate that has multiple rubber pellet-like studs.

Indoor Courts (IC)

If you’re playing futsal or indoor football, the IC configured shoe should be your choice. It has a plain non-marking rubber outsole that provides a consistent grip on indoor floors.

Playing Position

Where you play affects how much and what kind of stress you put on your feet. That, in turn, affects your shoe choice.

Wide Midfield

If you’re a wide midfield player, you need to make lateral movements on the field. Such movements can cause ankle injuries if you shoes with a lower cut. So, your best bet is to go with high-top football shoes that provide extra support for your ankles.

Defensive Player

For defensive skill players like centre-backs and full-backs (left-back or right-back), mid-cut football shoes are great as they help them manoeuvre easily on the field.

Forward Player

If you’re a forward skill player that needs light-weight shoes that highly manoeuvrable and support quick movements, consider buying a pair of low-cut football shoes.

Brand and Colour

Now that you’ve considered the previous factors, you can look at the brand on the shoe. Almost all footballers have a preference for one brand or the other. Whether its because you feel the fit is spot on, you’re nostalgic because of your memories associated with the brand, or you want it just because your favourite footballer wears it, it’s up to you which brand you choose from. But know that unlike choosing the best online scratch cards, football shoes aren’t great because of who made them.

Finally, you can also take into consideration the colour of your football shoes. The ongoing trend seems to be that the brighter the better. But that’s also what makes black and white shoes so special. So depending on what floats your boat, choose the colour that excites you and doesn’t forget to show it off to your teammates.

So there you have it, you’ve got yourself a great pair of football shoes. They look good and make you look good while scoring that goal. But remember to take care of your shoes if you want them to last long and perform well. Clean them after every use and dry them with a newspaper. Clean your soleplate with a soft brush to remove all the dirt and grass from the studs and the grooves.