Women’s football boots: We need to catch up

There's been a lot of discussion recently about the lack of football boots engineered for female footballers - and rightly so. It’s got me thinking back to a project I was involved in that launched back in 2016; the adidas Ace and X football boots ‘designed specifically for female players’.

There was a huge amount of engineering and biomechanics studies that went into their development, as well as wide scale consulting and testing with female athletes, resulting in a product that was largely well received - at least from a performance point of view.

Whilst not every aspect of the campaign landed so well, stepping first into the market in this science-led and consumer-driven way was certainly a step in the right direction, and a challenge certainly worth taking. Critical feedback on the project presented an opportunity to learn and an opportunity to grow – in this case, not only as individuals or as a company, but as an industry.

The landscape of women's football has evolved tremendously over the last decade, and it’s great to see brands increasingly invest in the women's game. However, recent criticism of football boot brands - particularly concerning the lack of availability of women’s specific boots and frequent occurrences of ACL injuries in women’s football - suggests that progress is not happening quick enough.

Whichever way you look at it - "women's specific" / "engineered with female players in mind" / "designed primarily for a foot shape most commonly found with female athletes" - developments in this area are indeed few, and most have only come in the last ten years. Football boots engineered predominantly for men, on the other hand, have been refined for over a hundred years. There’s a lot of catching up to do.

Gender classification in anthropometry highlights a number of differences in the average foot size and shape between men and women. Heel size, medial arch height, ankle position and forefoot width are some of the main differences. In addition, the average height and weight at each shoe size has a major influence on biomechanics. Ethnicity is another important factor in the wider topic of this conversation.

Creating a boot with women's feet as a starting point is still not a ‘one size fits all’ solution, but it does offer a significantly higher chance of a better fit for female players. It’s not about how comfortable a boot might feel for a couple of matches or during a couple of training sessions either, it’s about sustained, repetitive use at high intensity - hours, days, weeks & months of wear - and the effects long-term use might have.

One criticism with the women’s Ace and X at the time was a lack of messaging around the engineering and sports science that went into their development, and the reasons that there was a need for something innovative and something more tailored. Furthermore, their unique design aesthetic (compared to the other Ace & X that launched earlier in that season) became a distraction from what the core of the project fundamentally was.

More brands have since entered this space, each one taking their own unique approach to design and marketing. Some will argue that female-specific engineering is the right and only way, whereas others will say a female-led but more open approach is best (acknowledging the fact that some men may find a better fit in a ‘women's’ style).

Inclusive vs exclusive - it’s a difficult balance. Being inclusive can provide consumers a greater sense of freedom in choice, whilst being exclusive can provide a greater sense of suitability. In the end, it’s likely these different approaches would have fairly similar (if not, the same) design markers. The recent calls for more research into ACL injuries specifically in women’s football, however, sounds like a female-specific approach in any future developments would be highly necessary, both from a product and marketing point of view.

Perhaps an open-source or more collaborative drive towards better fitting and better performing boots for female-players is what the football industry needs. Brands, football organisations, players, football clubs, sports science specialists, orthopaedic doctors, ergonomists, universities, etc., all coming together to address these problems and develop new industry standards.

An open and more collaborative stance might hinder competitive edge for brands in the short-term, but will only be better for the growth of the market overall in the long-term - something that both brands and consumers would benefit from. Inviting humility and encouraging collaboration would ultimately speed up the process in providing what's best for female players, and what's best for the sport.

Further reading:

The Guardian - Survey finds 82% of female players experience pain wearing football boots
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/jun/27/female-players-pain-wearing-football-boots-european-club-association-study

The Guardian - New womens football boots - a big step forward or marketing ploy?
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/jun/14/new-womens-football-boots-big-step-forward-or-marketing-ploy

Sky Sports - Why are ACL injuries so common in women's football?
https://www.skysports.com/football/news/35730/12748748/inside-the-wsl-why-are-acl-injuries-so-common-in-womens-football

Okholm Kryger, K., Thomson, A., Tang, A. et al. - Ten questions in sports engineering: technology in elite women’s football.
https://rdcu.be/dgD0U

IDA - Why do you need women’s specific football boots?
https://www.idasports.com.au/blogs/expert-advice/why-do-you-need-women-s-specific-football-boots

The Evolution of Women’s Soccer Boots
http://fitba2014.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-evolution-of-womens-soccer-boots.html

The Guardian - If the boot doesn’t fit then female footballers should have an alternative
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2018/jun/20/boot-fit-female-footballers-marketing-mens

The Drum - Adidas creates new line of football boots specifically for women
https://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/11/30/adidas-creates-new-line-football-boots-specifically-women

Adidas News - Adidas unveils new Ace and X boots designed specifically for female players
https://news.adidas.com/football/adidas-unveils-new-ace-and-x-boots-designed-specifically-for-female-players/s/f05790bc-aa9d-4587-9e5e-a067a4a786ff