Brightly-coloured football boots have rather quickly permeated the beautiful game’s consciousness as colourful cleats like the Superfly III and adiZero Prime have become the norm.
But what if we told you that the most popular colourway for the majority of players is still black?
According to a poll undertaken by Texaco, that’s exactly the case in the N-Power Championship!
In their search for ‘Proper Footy’, Texaco conducted a study of over 260 professional players from teams like Leeds United, Nottingham Forest and Queen’s Park Rangers to see whether pro’s in the rough’n’tumble' Championship mostly stuck to ‘Proper’ colours for their football boots.
And surprisingly, they did! Despite the division being full of tricky flair players like Adel Taarabt and Leroy Lita, 35% of those surveyed went with classic black football boots.
Cleats like the adiPure IV and Puma King Finale both having been launched in vintage black colourways in the last few months certainly won’t harm the amount of black football boots on the pitch at any given time, and real mainstays of the boot market like the Copa Mundial and World Cup certainly can’t have harmed numbers either.
Boro’s Tony McMahon in his ‘Purist’ Puma King Finale football boots
Championship defender, Middlesbrough˘ Tony McMahon who wears classic black Puma King boots commented: ”A lot of players wear multi-coloured boots, but I have always been a bit of a purist and stuck with my black boots.' It˘ what you do with your feet not how they look!”
However, being the football boots eggheads that we are here at Footy-Boots.com, we know that the amount of football boots in particular colourways can vary from month to month due to manufacturer releases!
For example, if the survey was conducted between January and March 2011, Nike’s ever-popular Superfly II was mostly spotted in Black thanks to that great Black/Silver/Circuit Orange colourway.
Could these Superflys be the reason for such a big percentage of black boots?
Had the survey been conducted a month earlier, most Vapor wearers would have been wearing the luminous Voltage Cherry version – which really would have made an impression on the results!
Away from the professionals, it seems that the football boots-buying public also have a lot of love for the traditional black boot.
According to a leading football boot manufacturer; their sales figures revealed that out of the 5.7m pairs sold last year in the UK and Ireland, 38% or 2.2m pairs sold were black
It seems that the younger generation, however, is much more likely to look to more outlandish football boots colourways.
In another survey conducted by Texaco, only 26% of those questioned went for black boots, with white coming in a close second at 24%.
Whilst we expect many younger kids to buy the same boots as their idols, the most shocking statistic from this survey is that nearly one-in-ten 7-12 year olds is opting for gold football boots!
I think we all know who is to blame for that!
Black and white boots are always so classy. Cant be beat
“flair players like … Leroy Lita” xD
Black is obviously the most popular colour because it goes with anything
companies should know by know that you cant go wrong with black, in fact if nike where to make a black and white superfly, it would probably be there there best selling superfly ever.
Too true, I’ve dreamed of that haha
horrible survey with no control at all. They knew the time of the survey would play a big part in the results and they said it like it’s the find of the century.
Garbage survey.
To make this accurate it needs to record more players and over a longer time like 2-3 years. So we can at least get thru one or two product cycles (vapors and Adizeros come to mind). Take into account how often these players change boots and all their boots selection.
I was watching my Saturday League game and about 5 players didn’t have black boots when others did. I think most of them have outgrown the show offy phase and jsut wanna get on with it.
i know for a fact that a number of footballing youth academies actually BAN their players from wearing anything but black boots. The reasons vary slightly from club to club but this is fairly common in England
this new forum font size is horrible, I feel as though I am reading
children’s book…
totally agree with gorf.
black boots are too much
only the best players should wear gold boots, i dont think anyone should at any league until they reach the top of the game. really, other colours are ok but come on, gold?