Anorak News » Blog Archive » Football fashion: why can’t black be the new black?

Football fashion: why can’t black be the new black?

Much has been made of Nike’s ghastly new pink boots, as sported here by Arsenal’s Nicklas Bendtner.

The pink boot was inevitable, really. From the moment that Alan Ball first pulled on a pair of white boots, for Everton in the 1970/71 Charity Shield (”They were crap,” squeaked little Alan), it was only a matter of time - it took almost 40 years, but we got there in the end.

It’s good that the homophobic world of professional football has finally embraced the most-feared colour in the spectrum - even now, the colour pink has both homosexual and effeminate connotations, in small minds at least - but does it need to?

Coloured football boots are one of the worst things to happen to football. They encourage show-offs (see Cristiano Ronaldo) and discourage team play. They’re a way for vain (ie. more skilful than us) players to say “Look at me, I’m better than my team-mates!”, and, of course, they help the likes of Nike and adidas to sell more boots.

Pink is the new black, sadly. Why can’t black be the new black?

If Anorak was a football manager, we would make all of our players wear black boots. And if that sounds like a Grumpy Old Men-style rant… well, that’s because it is.

Anorak

Posted: 27th, November 2008 | In: Back pages, Sports Comments (8) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink

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Petronius says:
November 30th, 2008 at 8:04 am

Ah, I can only refer to those glory-fans which came up with that theory, however, as a fellow pedant I stand corrected.

Anorak says:
November 29th, 2008 at 12:55 pm

“Most Gooners I know blamed his inconsistent form on the pink Boots, and the fact that up until last week he had not scored in them.”

@ Petronius - the recent Champions League game in which Bendtner scored was only the second in which he wore the pink boots, so I doubt any Gooners were blaming his previously abject form on them.

Yours, a pedant.

Petronius says:
November 28th, 2008 at 7:05 pm

Point taken… …I indicate the pink on maps thing, so pink for UK, Dominions and Commonwealth, and on the FT. Anything else is just… …Continental

June says:
November 28th, 2008 at 11:02 am

Oh come on Petronius, the Financial Times is pink…..oh maybe…

Petronius says:
November 28th, 2008 at 7:36 am

Most Gooners I know blamed his inconsistent form on the pink Boots, and the fact that up until last week he had not scored in them.

He scores one goal and all of a sudden Bendtner, Arsenal and of course the pink Nike Boots are getting lots of free copy.

Personally I never wore the floral patterns of the 1990s, let alone ANY pink this decade. I was in the M&S Pantheon with the Missus last year and we were looking at socks, some navy blue ones to go with what I normally wear, and I rejected them because they had pink in them, I could feel the older couple next to me approving. No right-thinking Englishman would wear pink, apart from adorning his map of the world.

Leeds in that season, apart from being time-wasting dirty so and so’s who were bad for football, also released 3 different strips that year, that and the white boots were indeed the beginning of the end.