Why have footballers' shin-pads become so incredibly small?

Times

a day ago

What's the best parallel to draw. A bank card? A prawn cracker? A Nokia 8210?
There have been times this season when I've pondered what a referee — or the game's lawmakers, Ifab, for that matter — would do if footballer actually decided to stuff one of the above down their socks instead of the micro shin-pads many are choosing to wear these days.
You must have noticed. The trend of players wearing mini shinnies beneath socks rolled down beneath their calves. The outline of a pair no bigger than, as Everton's Dominic Calvert-Lewin once described his, a custard cream.
A couple of the alternatives above would probably offer more protection — and, as it turns out, providing they were covered by the player's socks and stayed put throughout, there's nothing much a referee can do about a player's choice of lower-limb protection.
Shin-pads have been mandatory since 1990, but there's nothing in Ifab's laws beyond hazy definitions like 'suitable' and 'appropriate' that states what size or material they should be. As the trend for smaller and smaller versions grows, Ifab maintains that it is the responsibility of players, not the referee, to decide what constitutes reasonable protection.
Jack Grealish's penchant for low slung socks and children's shin-pads is no secret — a look born during his youth-team days with Aston Villa, when the socks kept shrinking in the wash. He performed well and a superstition took root that has never left him.
Grealish is by no means the first maverick to eschew shin-pads, of course, but when England's best centre half and Real Madrid's newest defensive recruit are shunning them it is clear that this is a trend that has moved beyond flair players and fashionistas.
The uber-confident Dean Huijsen, who will swap Bournemouth for the Bernabeu in a £50million deal this summer, has spent the season nonchalantly marshalling the south coast club's defence wearing a pair no bigger than a Mars bar. So too Illia Zabarnyi, 22, with whom Huijsen, 20, formed the Premier League's youngest central defensive pairing, but they are by no means alone.
Marc Guéhi, Crystal Palace's FA Cup-winning captain, bossed England's defence at last summer's Euros wearing a pair that looked as substantial as a piece of cardboard — and, these days, it wouldn't come as much of a surprise if that's what they were made of. A few years back, the right back, Aleix Vidal, suffered a nasty gash to his right shin while playing for Espanyol against Real Betis, which left him requiring 15 stitches. Turned out his only protection was a floppy piece of material inside his sweaty socks.
Some players are now slipping a piece of foam padding down there to comply with regulations. Back in November, Michael Olise went a step further, refusing to wear shin-pads altogether. As the former Crystal Palace winger prepared to come off the bench for Bayern Munich in their Champions League game against Paris Saint-Germain, the fourth official noticed he wasn't wearing any protection at all. After a curt exchange, and begrudgingly slipping a pair down his socks, Olise surreptitiously removed them and tossed them back towards the dugout before running on to the pitch.
Now, does any of this really matter? Are micro shin-guards dangerous? Or are shin-pads really as important in the modern game? And have they ever done much to protect you from the most serious injuries anyway?
In one sense, none of this is new. Before 1990, players could wear what they wanted under their socks and many preferred wearing nothing at all. Believe it or not, though, shin-pads have been around in football for about 150 years. Sam Weller Widdowson, a cricketer for Nottinghamshire and footballer for Nottingham Forest, is credited for introducing the concept after cutting down a pair of cricket pads and strapping them to his stockings for a game of football in 1874.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, he's said to have copped a bit of stick that day. But they soon caught on and Widdowson — who was also capped once by England and became chairman of Forest — went on to produce and market them with the Nottinghamshire batsman and Notts County co-founder, Richard Daft.
The shin-pad's ultimate origin is arguably the greave (from the Old French greve 'shin, shin armour'), which was used to protect the tibia from attack from as far back the Bronze Age. My first shin-pads certainly bore closer resemblance to heavy battle armour than today's microscopic wee things. There are pictures (in my loft) of me playing for junior teams with my skinny legs guarded with contraptions that wouldn't have looked out of place in the film 300. But I was playing left back for Celtic Boys' Club's under-11s, not slashing my way through enemy hordes alongside Gerard Butler's Spartans.
That was back in the mid-90s, when giant plastic and foam knee-high protectors, with ankle guards and wrap-around velcro straps at the top and bottom, were very much in vogue. I was still playing in them until I turned professional with Forest in 2002, aged 17. That's when I noticed all my team-mates slipping far more ergonomic, slim-line versions down their socks, while I spent ten minutes wedging each leg into its sheathing.
Needless to say, those didn't last much longer. And, if you asked players back then, the primary reason they'd give for shedding those cumbersome things would be the same as today's players: comfort. Players want to feel light and agile on the pitch, even if only in their own minds. When you train all week without wearing any, you can perhaps see why looking down at legs with chunks of plastic (or carbon fibre) strapped to them might have the opposite effect on match day.
Yet there's no doubting that the modern-day fashion for socks below the calves has a lot to answer for. Footballers are a funny bunch. Every detail matters; appearance too. And as the game has evolved — with more protection from referees, and tactical developments that mean defenders make far more passes than tackles — so too have priorities for this generation. But what about younger ones?
Where Premier League idols walk, wide-eyed children tend to follow, and micro shin-pads have become a familiar sight in the grassroots game. Some clubs have enforced bans. One of them, Penistone Church from Barnsley, made headlines in August when their 15-year-old player, Alfie, suffered a double leg break while wearing a pair measuring 3x9cm. 'They are the most pathetic shin-pads you've ever seen,' Alfie rued afterwards, telling the BBC: 'It's not worth the extra bit of speed to have you knocked out of football for months and months.'
Studies have shown that shin-pads offer some measure of protection against tibia fracture, but the force of a challenge alone is rarely the only factor in such traumas. More often than not, the foot is planted, or trapped in an unfortunate position at the point of impact, which often arrives from the side as opposed to head on. I speak from experience, having suffered a compound fracture of my left leg in a tackle during a game in 2009. The only thing my shin-pads did that day was hide the bone piercing out of my skin.
Vidal's nasty gash, cited earlier, could easily have been inflicted on an unprotected part of the leg even if he had been wearing a more substantial pair of shin-guards. But young Alfie was right about one thing: there are some truly 'pathetic' examples on show nowadays.
Jack Hinshelwood caused a stir last season when one of his micro-pads fell out against Arsenal. When the referee handed it back, it looked like he was sharing a Pringle crisp with the Brighton & Hove Albion defender.
The trend has spawned a cottage industry. As well as micro shin-pads by specialised brands, customised versions adorned with pictures of family, sporting triumphs or, in the case of the former Real Madrid and Spain striker Joselu, his beloved dog, are now commonplace in changing rooms.
The Manchester City defender, Josko Gvardiol, has been known to rock a small pair of Godfather-themed numbers, with the message, 'Keep your friends close but your enemies closer,' above an image of Marlon Brando's character, Don Corleone. Gvardiol must really like The Godfather.
If you're willing to part with £195, your shin-pads can now gather reams of performance data too. XSEED, created by the Italian analytics company Soccerment, collates everything from passing, shooting and expected goals metrics, to distance, speed and geo-location data. All the information is collated on an app on your phone, to be harnessed by coaches or uploaded to scouting platforms. Inter Milan's Federico Dimarco swears by them, even if you have to charge them up every few games.
However, unless Ifab steps in, the humble shin-pads' days could be numbered. Widdowson would be turning in his greve.