A Boot reviewer does a book review

Thanks to Footballboots.co.uk for providing a copy of the book

Two common things I get asked about is which boots should someone choose and about the sizing. There has been a lot of temptation to make an exhaustive guide about a lot of the boots on the market, but such an undertaking is difficult at best. Thankfully, Ian Ebbs of Football Boots YouTube has done the work for us. I cannot begin to imagine the time it took to put this book together, but it is worth it.

One of the best things about the book is how much it manages to cover. For a thin book you might expect stuff to be missed out on, but Ian covers pretty much every base. Almost every major brand is mentioned, and of these major brands each silo gets its own section. This means that there is a lot of good information on each boot. Some could argue that a lot of this information might be known among the hardcore boot otakus but the majority of people playing football and buying boots are not like that. Because of this the book becomes a handy resource for a lot of the more casual buyers who still want info on their next boot.

The biggest advantage the book has is that this information is concise and in one place. You would be hard-pressed to find a guide that is this clear and easy to navigate as Football Boots: How to Choose Your Next Pair does. Sure, there are boot videos out there, and those are definitely handy as well. But they cannot cover everything otherwise that would be a multi-hour video and I am not sure that many people have that sort of attention span, much less the resources on the other side required to make such a video.

Another advantage the book has is that the team at Football Boots have been able to cover a lot of football boots over the years. While I certainly try to cover is much as I can, since I am mostly focused on brands and boots available in the Japanese market, and therefore miss out on covering some big releases, like the Mercurial 15 or the Puma Future. Sure, I did a review on the Speedflow series, but not a lot of people will look to me for the next Mercurial review, especially given how poorly I rated the Vapor 13, which seems to have been everyone’s favourite.

There is something else that the boot does well and that is to talk about entry-level boots. It is very rare for any reviewer to cover boots at this price point, but a good amount of people will look at entry level price points for their next pair. For example, I play at a fairly competitive level and a good five or six people on my team wear entry level boots. And just the same as you do not want to spend $200+ on a pair of boots and have them not fit, the same can be said for people buying at entry-level price points. Therefore, this information is important.

Even for us higher-end boot otakus, the book can be handy. I have no idea off the top of my head what the current New Balance Takela is like. So, it is nice to be able to have this information handy. And again, not everyone who splurges on a high-end boot has all the info they need to make their purchase.

The long and short of it is that Football Boots: How to Choose Your Next Pair will be handy for a lot of people. And at the very least, it is nice that someone is writing about football boots in book form because it makes it feel more permanent to me.

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