Chelsea’s 4-3 win over Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday could remain in supporters’ minds as a defining comeback victory for Enzo Maresca’s visiting side. Their left-back Marc Cucurella, on the other hand, will hope the memory of his early slip-ups during the game is not as long-lasting.
Tottenham went two goals ahead inside 11 minutes, largely due to Cucurella’s inability to stay on his feet. For the first goal, he gifted possession to Brennan Johnson, who dribbled down the right before crossing for Dominic Solanke to score. Six minutes later, Cucurella was in a losing battle with gravity again near the 18-yard box, leading to Dejan Kulusevski doubling the lead.
Shortly after the final whistle, the Spain international defender posted a photo on Instagram of the Puma Future 8 boots he wore in those opening 11 minutes in a bin in Chelsea’s dressing room. He captioned the image ‘Sorry Blues’, before deleting it shortly after.
After the second slip, Cucurella signalled to the Chelsea bench that he wanted to change his boots and swiftly reverted to the previous Future 7 Ultimate model, which he had worn since January, including during Spain’s victorious Euro 2024 campaign. He ditched the new Future 8 silhouette, which Cucurella debuted after its official release two days earlier.
But Puma, which has yet to respond to The Athletic’s approach for comment regarding Cucurella’s switch back to the previous model, may not be alone in feeling a little put out by his public display of dissatisfaction.
Instead of lingering on Kulusevski’s celebration, the Sky Sports cameras were on Cucurella as he signalled to a member of Chelsea’s kit team. In response, pundit Jamie Carragher suggested Cucurella was “blaming” the unnamed staff member, describing the 26-year-old’s actions as “absolute schoolboy stuff”. For context, James Maddison of Spurs fared better in a pair of Future 8 boots after coming on in the second half, assisting Son Heung-min’s consolation goal in the sixth minute of added time.
Have you EVER seen anything like that in the Premier League? 😳
Marc Cucurella slips not once, but TWICE in the build-up to Tottenham goals, prompting him to change his boots! 👟🫣 pic.twitter.com/jhORjfmiGC
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) December 8, 2024
“It’s 100 per cent on Cucurella,” League Two side Swindon Town’s kit manager Steve Hooper tells The Athletic. “You decide as a player what boots you want to wear. As far as I’m aware, he (Cucurella) changed from one pair of studs to another, which is quite confusing. It’s not even as though he changed the length — the studs on Puma boots only come in one size. It’s down to the player, you can’t choose their boots for them.”
Like many players in the Premier League, Cucurella wears boots with metal studs made for use on soft, natural grass. This is a bespoke alteration by Puma, with the Future 8 only currently available to buy from retailers with a moulded ‘firm ground’ sole.
“Without having tried the Future 8 at length, I can still say that the feeling of both boots in terms of traction and stability is very similar,” says James Agar, a football-boot expert and operator of the ‘Boot Wizard’ YouTube channel. “Therefore, considering Cucurella was using soft-ground boots in both instances, which tend to offer similar traction, I’d say it was fairly unlikely the tooling on the boots would be different enough to explain why he slipped.
“However, we should consider there may be personal customisations that are or are not present between each boot. Other elements, like the overall lateral stability of the upper, might have had an impact in some way. And simply that they’re new boots that he’s not fully used to.”
Soft-ground studs are one of three primary sole plates available, alongside firm-ground moulded studs and the shorter and more hollow artificial-ground variation.
“Firm ground is generally plastic-based,” says Agar. “The options are endless and varied and they’re designed for firm, natural grass. You see them in the Premier League less frequently than in parts of Europe, as the ground (in the UK) is soft pretty much all year round, and players want the extra traction. For example, when Cristiano Ronaldo played for Manchester United, he almost always wore soft-ground studs. When he played for Juventus (in Italy), where the ground is firmer, he mainly used a firm-ground sole plate.
“Many players in England wear soft-ground boots to get that extra bite into the ground. They’re longer metal studs to give you some extra purchase. It usually means you don’t slip.”
Typically, soft-ground boots have four 11mm (0.43in) studs at the front of the boot and two 13mm (0.51in) studs towards the heel area.
In 2006, Manchester United forward Wayne Rooney wore the Nike Air Zoom Total 90 Supremacy for the first time in a 3-0 defeat to Chelsea but switched out the standard-size metal studs for the longer 15mm variation. In the first half, Rooney planted those studs into Chelsea defender John Terry’s ankle, causing a cut that required 10 stitches. Two years ago, a by-then-retired Rooney told Sky Sports he wore those “maximum length” studs during that game to “try and injure someone”, comments the Football Association warned him about. Firm-ground ‘moulds’ are usually significantly shorter.
In an international friendly at Liverpool’s home ground Anfield just before the 2018 World Cup finals in Russia, Neymar swapped his studded Mercurial Vapor silhouettes for the less-common sole plate as he helped Brazil beat the tournament’s eventual runners-ups Croatia, 2-0. However, professionals rarely use them in England as they are not made for grass pitches.
The exact specifications of a boot and player preferences are decided before they are sent to a club’s kit man to prepare for matchday.
Lionel Messi, for example, has a stiffer forefoot and heel on his specific iteration of the Adidas F50 than is available to buy. He also has a different sole plate to the one Adidas sells publicly with his current boot, known as the ‘Gambetrax’. Declan Rice of Arsenal is another of several other high-profile players whose boots are made to measure by that German manufacturer.
Lionel Messi in a slightly modified version of the Gambetrax (Chris Arjoon/AFP via Getty Images)
After the makers send the boots to the training ground, kit staff may help prepare them for training or matchday by softening the upper (which is made from synthetic materials or leather) with a boot warmer, tightening and replacing studs when necessary, widening boots with a “boot stretcher”, or marking them with ‘T’ and ‘M’ to distinguish between those worn in training and matches.
“When I worked at West Bromwich Albion, I’d usually take one pair of moulds and one pair of studs (per player) to a match,” Pat Frost, now the kit manager for the England senior national team, tells The Athletic. “If players wanted to change their boots, they did it in the warm-up.
“At international level, the players turn up (at team get-togethers) with their boots. I won’t take any risks at all; if they give me five pairs of boots, I’ll take five pairs of boots. It’s a comfort blanket. They’ve always got them there, because they never know when they will change them.”
For Chelsea’s Terry, who wore different boots for the warm-up, first half and second half before discarding them after the game, kit men were relied upon to keep stock of his signature Umbro models. At the opposite end of the spectrum, now Manchester City midfielder Jack Grealish wore the same pair of Nike Hypervenom 2 boots throughout the second half of the season as his Aston Villa side secured promotion to the Premier League via the play-offs in 2019. By their decisive trip to Wembley in late May, the synthetic outer layer on the left one had almost entirely come off.
Jack Grealish wore his lucky boots today to help Aston Villa back into the Premier League 👟 pic.twitter.com/i90hL2HsIg
— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) May 27, 2019
Most players at the elite level tend to stick with a pair for at least a few matches, providing their boot deal does not require them to change model or colourway, a process that typically happens four times per season. Lower down the pyramid, boot deals are less common, and players are often free to wear whatever brands and silhouettes they want.
“Every player is different,” says Swindon’s Jonah Isaacs, who co-hosts the ‘Life of a Kitman’ podcast alongside Hooper. “We’ve got a player that’s got some Nike Tiempos as well as Adidas Predators and a pair of Mizunos. It depends on what the pitch is, how he’s feeling and how he’s trained as to what boot he’ll wear. They can jump from boot to boot.”
The decision to wear soft-ground or firm-ground boots is down to the player, with some preferring to alternate between sole plates depending on the climate and pitch condition and others sticking to the one sole that suits them best.
In Isaac’s experience, defenders tend to prefer a soft-ground sole plate, while attackers often use firm-ground moulds regardless of the state of the pitch as they are typically slightly lighter. However, former Crystal Palace star Wilfried Zaha is one of several tricky wingers who preferred metal studs when playing in the Premier League.
Ultimately, the player decides what boots they’ll wear on a matchday. Like on Sunday with Cucurella, the kit man is there to ensure they have options should they need them.
(Top photo: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
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