The Phenomenon of Football Shoes – What´S Your Colour?
Marketing & Culture 2010
“The phenomenon of football shoes – what´s your colour?”
Background
Since the first classic football shoes were introduced in 18861, they were simple uniform brown/black leather shoes with studs. The one and only characteristic of the early football boot was to provide the player grip on the playing surface and prevent him from slipping on muddy or wet grounds. During the following decades the football shoe underwent several technical modifications, especially in terms of the material they were composed of. Nevertheless, one particular characteristic all the time remained the same: the colour of the shoes, which was standardly black. This aspect changed in the mid-90s, when manufacturers started to provide some world-class players with white shoes. These shoes where released on a basis of sponsoring deals to promote their products. By and by manufacturers launched football shoes in various colours and are enjoying great popularity. Big name companies such as Nike, Adidas and Puma are releasing new special designed football boots frequently. Nowadays wearing coloured football shoes is very common, even in the lowest divisions and youth football. In other words: it is not easy to find the original black coloured football shoe back on the pitch; blue, green, red, white, yellow, silver, gold and even pink are presently established colours for football shoes. However, in the football world this development is more and more meeting with critics. Most prominent disputer of the coloured football shoe is Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson: Under new rules Manchester United 's junior players have been banned from wearing anything other than old-school black while on club business.2 Reason for this is that Ferguson is becoming concerned that some of United’s stars of the future were beginning to get ahead of themselves. 3
1 2
http://www.ehow.com/about_6118591_history-soccer-shoes.html
“The phenomenon of football shoes – what´s your colour?”
Background
Since the first classic football shoes were introduced in 18861, they were simple uniform brown/black leather shoes with studs. The one and only characteristic of the early football boot was to provide the player grip on the playing surface and prevent him from slipping on muddy or wet grounds. During the following decades the football shoe underwent several technical modifications, especially in terms of the material they were composed of. Nevertheless, one particular characteristic all the time remained the same: the colour of the shoes, which was standardly black. This aspect changed in the mid-90s, when manufacturers started to provide some world-class players with white shoes. These shoes where released on a basis of sponsoring deals to promote their products. By and by manufacturers launched football shoes in various colours and are enjoying great popularity. Big name companies such as Nike, Adidas and Puma are releasing new special designed football boots frequently. Nowadays wearing coloured football shoes is very common, even in the lowest divisions and youth football. In other words: it is not easy to find the original black coloured football shoe back on the pitch; blue, green, red, white, yellow, silver, gold and even pink are presently established colours for football shoes. However, in the football world this development is more and more meeting with critics. Most prominent disputer of the coloured football shoe is Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson: Under new rules Manchester United 's junior players have been banned from wearing anything other than old-school black while on club business.2 Reason for this is that Ferguson is becoming concerned that some of United’s stars of the future were beginning to get ahead of themselves. 3
1 2
http://www.ehow.com/about_6118591_history-soccer-shoes.html
References: Literature: Belk, Russell W., Güliz Ger & Søren Askegaard: “The Fire of Desire: A Multi-Sited Inquiry into Consumer Passions”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 30, no. 3 (December), 326-351. Elliott, Richard (2004), Making Up People: Consumption as a Symbolic Vocabulary for the Construction of Identity, in K. Ekström & H. Brembeck, eds. Elusive Consumption, Oxford: Berg, 129143. McCracken, Grant (1986), “Culture and consumption: A theoretical account of the structure and movement of the cultural meaning of consumer goods,” Journal of Consumer Research, 13 (1986), 71-84. Maguire, Jennifer Smith, Stanway, Kim (2008), Looking good: Consumption and the problems of selfproduction, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 11(1): 63-81. Thompson, Craig J. & Donna (1997), Speaking of Fashion: Consumers’ Use of Fashion Discourses and the Appropriation of Countervailing Cultural Meanings”, Journal of Consumer Research 24 (1): 15-42. Webpages: http://www.adidas.com/football/dk/products/f50 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1253304/Sir-Alex-Ferguson-continuesclampdown-gagging-Manchester-United-academy-kids.html http://www.ehow.com/about_6118591_history-soccer-shoes.html http://www.flensburg-online.de/blog/2010-07/mannschaftsfoto-deutschland-vor-dem-spiel-gegenspanien.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/feb/22/manchester-united-premierleague http://www.nike.com/nikefootball/home/?locale=en_GB http://www.welt.de/sport/fussball/article10133896/Matthaeus-Debuet-wird-fuer-Bulgarien-zumFinale.html 9