We love a good pair of football boots here at Balls.ie, so we were delighted to hear RTÉ panelist and Irish football legend Johnny Giles was also infatuated with his sporting footwear back in the glory days.
Speaking on 'Off The Ball' on Thursday night, Giles was discussing the introduction of sponsors on football jerseys, with it being the 40th anniversary of the first time that occurred. The former Manchester United and Leeds man explained that he didn't care too much about what he wore as his kit, but when asked if he was particular about his footwear, Giles revealed that he took great care over his boots.
Oh yeah, football boots were everything.
Funnily enough in those days you didn't have six or seven pairs of boots, you had different types and you had to break them in. I used to break them in in my bare feet because they'd stretch a little bit and you didn't want them to stretch at all, and you wouldn't train in those boots, you'd keep them [for matches].
You wouldn't train in them, you'd keep them because if you cut them or break them you wouldn't have them for the match on Saturday.
Giles then revealed that he greatly favoured Adidas boots, so much so that even when they were sponsored to wear the boots of another company, they simply disguised Adidas boots as the correct brand.
At Leeds we had a local company who gave us a few bob [to wear their boots], but they weren't very good.
We'd take the tongue out [of the Adidas boots] and cover the Adidas stripes to have the other logo showing. Mostly Adidas for me, maybe Puma for some of the lads, they were the best, and probably still are the best boots, but the boots we were getting a few bob for were not good.
Midweek, nobody could touch the boots, they had to be right for a Saturday. They were the most important things, the touch had to be really right. You'd take them to bed with you, you know?
Magnificent. Those bad boots were 'Stilos' according to a listener who later texted in, just for your information.
You often here players of Giles' era complain about the standard of boots back then compared with what is out today, or simply suggest that caring about boots in general is nonsense, so it's refreshing to hear a player from that time in football reveal that the pros cared just as much back then.
Although we're not exactly sure he would have fancied trotting around in Mesut Ozil and Dele Alli's new lime green laceless boots, but as always there are a whole host of reasonable looking boots out there too.
Giles was speaking on 'Off The Ball' on Newstalk.
