Soccer equipment guide

What goes on my feet?

First of all, it’s totally fine to just wear sneakers. Sure, you’ll fall down, but kids fall down all the time. Any closed-toed shoe is fine. 

For soccer shoes, often called “boots,” you can get “turf shoes” and “cleats”. Turf shoes have ridges on the bottom, and cleats have studs that stick out. Among the cleats, you want the ones labeled FG for Firm Ground. If you’re playing in the mud in the Southeast or Midwest, you might use a Soft Ground boot, with longer and pointier studs.   

The standard soccer cleats usually have a pattern like this Adidas Copa, with studs supporting the periphery and center of the forefoot, and four studs at the heel.

While it is technically permissible to wear baseball cleats instead, provided that the Referee thinks they are safe (not sharp, pointy, or serrated), soccer boots work better. Soccer studs are shorter so you can be lower to the ground. Baseball cleats have stud at the tip of the big toe for acceleration (and so does Trinity Rodman’s version of the Adidas F50). Soccer has more running than baseball. Also, it hurts more when someone accidentally kicks you with shoes that have a toe stud. 

Note: there’s a correct way to run for distance, and a faster, less efficient, way to run for speed. Most people do one or the other. For keep-away games like soccer, basketball, and football, the biomechanics is about acceleration, but also about absorbing energy to protect the body from the stress of impacts. However, in none of these, is repeatedly pushing with your toes a good idea. If you rely on your big toe to get leverage, you’ll develop “turf toe,” a type of tendonitis in the foot. You can get away with it with one practice and game per week, for 3 months out of the year. However, iif you want your athlete to endure the All-Star season, choose a shoe that penalizes toe-lifts until they adapt their movement to use the forefoot instead of the toe.

What do the sizes mean? “Big Kids” sizes are the same as men’s sizes. Women’s sizes are usually the same shoe, but narrower – add 1.5 to get the equivalent men’s length. For width, the standard width is “B” for women’s sizes and “D” for men’s. Which is sort of silly, because some women have wide toes, even if their ankle is narrow. The most difficult size to find is 7 – it’s a size kids grow through quickly, so they make fewer of them. Since nobody has a perfectly average foot, it’s best to try them on at the store until you know what fits. New Balance is the only shoe brand to make shoes in every size and every width.

Soccer boots are inherently uncomfortable – since all your weight is supported by the studs, the floor of the shoe has to be stiff. Change out of your slides and into your boots when you get to the pitch, so you don’t fall over in the parking lot. Some people prefer turf shoes, with treads instead of studs, or even plain sneakers. Turf shoes are more flexible, similar to sneakers. If your child is sensory-seeking and squishes things with her feet, she might prefer these, so she can feel and react to the ground. Some players also prefer turf shoes late in the summer, when the sun has baked the grass to a crisp, and cleats slide over the soil like skates on ice.

 

IDA makes boots specifically for girls and women. They have a wider toe box, narrower heel, and more arch support, with more, shorter studs. This is the IDA Rise Club, a multipurpose medium-grade shoe. And it comes with an encouraging daffirmation on the bottom. All the IDA stud patterns are the same.

When you want to pay more for boots, you can choose a specialized stud pattern. 

Midfielders who change direction often might want a shoe like this Nike Cyclone, where the studs let you spin on your toes. If you’re the sort of person who benefits from this kind of shoe, you rarely put weight on your heel.

Wingers who accelerate fast often want a shoe optimized for running forward, like these from the Nike Zoom series. You can dig in with your big toe to accelerate faster, but you’ll want to work up to it, or your tendons or plantar fascia may get inflamed. 

For everyone else, there are a wide range of specialty boots. This Adidas Copa Pure III Elite has a special top surface to increase friction on the ball. The studs form 3 distinct grip regions: toe, forefoot, and heel, with a flexure so the toe area can rock from side to side. People who wear this boot probably also rarely put weight on their heels.

These ridiculously expensive Unozero leather shoes, handmade in Italy, might make sense if you play on perfectly manicured Bermuda grass inside the Rose Bowl.

And then there’s the Nike Phantom GX II stud pattern, which must have been inspired by Salvador Dali. They say it’s for changing direction, without spinning. Think of it as pan/strafe motions in video games, or dolly motion if you’re into making movies. 

Some boots come in different grades: club, pro, and elite. The more expensive, pro and elite materials are stickier, and also softer. So you get better ball control, and it hugs your feet better,  but it also hurts more when someone steps on you. These are the Nike Phantom, with club on the left, pro in the middle, and elite on the right. You can see that the amount of surface texture changes. The elite shoes are also harder to clean!

Socks

Socks also matter. Grip socks have little rubber bumps on the bottom. You can buy them, and wear them under your team socks (cut the leg sleeves off), or you can decorate your team socks with “Soft Rubber Textile Paint.” (We’ll have some at Victory Park in September)

Is there science behind this? Sort of

• Some studies have found that little dots on the bottom of socks reduced the number of sprained ankles on soccer teams. The mechanism is thought to be that it improves the nervous system’s ability to sense variations in the terrain.
• Between cleats vs sneakers, it’s unclear which leads to fewer injuries. Kids fall all the time, so … practice the tuck & roll.

Shinguards

Two large nerves, branches of the sciatic nerve, run down your shin. It hurts A LOT when those get whacked. More seriously, every year, someone will play pickup soccer at school or with friends, without shinguards, and get kicked, and something breaks in the ankle, leg, or knee. Hence, AYSO requires shinguards. (Exceptions: you may participate in skill training and non-contact drills without them, or everyone can play barefoot.)

There are NOCSAE certified shinguards, which you can use in high school CIF games, and then there are generic shinguards, which are up to you to decide if they’re good enough. Only a few brands have paid for NOCSAE certification of certain of their product lines. If you show up with itty bitty little shinguards, the Referee may ask you to replace them before you can play. 

 

For beginners, you usually want shinguards with a heel strap that pads your ankles, because it hurts a lot to get kicked there, too..

 

The Referee’s is the final arbiter as to the suitability of the player’s equipment. If you buy shinguards at a retail store, or they’re made by a well-known brand, they’ll be good enough for AYSO.