There are certain aspects of modern football that seem to bring people out in a wild and curious rage. Half-and-half scarves. Referees inadvertently getting in the way of a pass. Players waving imaginary yellow cards (and even though the card is essentially conceptual, for some reason it is always yellow).
Into this broad and varied genre we could also insert coloured football boots, which is why there was a broad ripple of applause earlier this week at the news that Manchester City have banned their academy players from wearing them. The new diktat is an attempt to ensure that City’s young players “stay grounded”, as if there were some supernatural correlation between shoe colour and moral turpitude. Still, given the rapidly-swelling list of items that have already been banned under the Pep Guardiola regime – pizza, fruit juice, wireless internet, Joe Hart – perhaps it was only a matter of time before coloured boots came under suspicion. As any self-respecting authoritarian will tell you, the only acceptable colour for boots is black.
One can only imagine what the disciplinarians at the City academy might have made of the “Messi 16+ PureAgility 10/10 Firm Ground Cleats”, which were released this week. The latest batch of footwear to be endorsed by the world’s equal-best striker, the 10/10s are nothing if not eye-catching: luridly green on the bridge and the toe, with a weird metallic heel that brings to mind the skin of a particularly healthy trout. Equally eccentric is the promotional blurb accompanying the release: try to identify the point in the following paragraph at which the copywriter finally gave up the will to live and lapsed into a sort of advertising coma.
“Messi’s domination of the game is surpassed by no other. Where others are fast, he is first. Strive for the same acceleration and untouchable agility in these special-edition soccer cleats. Done in glowing green to honour Messi’s superhuman abilities, these elite-level cleats feature a light, snug-fitting AGILITYKNIT upper that fuels the type of aggressive play that wins games.”
The latest batch of footwear to be endorsed by the world’s equal-best striker, the 10/10s are nothing if not eye-catching: luridly green on the bridge Credit: Adidas
Unfortunately, all attempts to evaluate these claims at first hand ended in failure. The boots were issued in a strictly limited edition of just 100 pairs, each individually numbered, each retailing at the knockdown price of $400 (£330 to £3000, depending on how far sterling has fallen by the time you read this). And so the only thing left to do, really, is to wonder what this all means. What can a pair of ruinously expensive Messi-endorsed football boots possibly mean?
Quite a lot, actually; although we can at the outset safely ignore any potential sporting benefit. There is a natural paradox at the heart of all boot endorsements: if the player is so talented in the first place, why do they need the boots? A player as good as Messi could surely wear carpet slippers and still win the Pichichi Trophy most seasons. Meanwhile, if I turn up at my local five-a-side game wearing Messi’s £330 boots, not only will I miraculously fail to be transformed into a footballing force majeure, but I run the serious risk of departing the pitch with several stud-shaped indentations on my inner ankle. On the contrary, show me the boots that turned Aly Cissokho into a Premier League player despite possessing the bare minimum of applicable talent, and I am ready to buy.
Manchester City's academy players have been banned from wearing boots that are not black
Manchester City's academy players have been banned from wearing boots that are not black Credit:
So what, exactly, is being sold here? Not so much a simple piece of athletic equipment, I would argue, as a reverie: an aspiration, an imagined lifestyle essentially indistinguishable from the one watchmakers and sports car manufacturers and high-end fashion labels are trying to sell you. Whereas the match-day experience has long been commodified and repackaged for the moneyed crowd, now even something as simple and universal as the football boot has been incorporated into the spiel. It is the logical culmination of a process that has seen football metamorphose from an everyday working-class pursuit to a high-end luxury good.
Witness the inexorable rise of “boot porn” in recent years, fuelled and enabled by new media – websites, boutique fanzines, Instagram accounts – that are more willing to blur the line between advertising and editorial. The aim is not to stir the pure, organic passion of sport, but to tickle the unquenchable gills of consumer envy. Not just to generate desire, but to render that desire unrequited. To create a tornado of “want” so powerful and irresistible that you will willingly indebt yourself in an attempt to satisfy it.
Or, to put it another way: the point of the Messi boots is not to sell you the Messi boots so you can wear them and play better football. The point is to make you crave the Messi boots. It is why they decided to make only 100 of them. And if that seems a bit far-fetched, then substitute football boots for houses. Selling dewy-eyed first-time buyers an impossible dream is pretty much the cornerstone of the property market in this country.
Of course, you could argue that this is just capitalism. And you would be right: as of Tuesday afternoon, the price of the Messi 10/10 boots had soared to almost £3,000 on online auction sites. They may not do much for your game, those boots, but they sure make a hell of an investment. I might even be tempted to invest in a pair myself, if only they did them in black.
source : http://www.telegraph.co.uk
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