A deep dive into the ‘holes in football socks’ phenomenon – & why Richard Keys is right

If you’re a casual watcher of football—perhaps your family or friends or partner has coaxed you into watching the European Championship—you may have noticed something a little odd going on with the players’ socks.

Avid viewers have been aware of this for a while now. High-profile ballers like Jude Bellingham and Kyle Walker are cutting the calves of their socks full of holes like Swiss cheese.

Your mam’s annoyed—why are all these footballers so scruffy these days? Most of them don’t even tuck their shirt in anymore.

Your dad is upset—well it’s just bloody daft, isn’t it? First it was mohawks or mokestrels or whatever it was, then it was pink boots, now it’s bloody fishnet socks. The game’s gone.

Richard Keys is predicably outraged, but in a surprisingly not Brexity way—“Enough of this nonsense, there’s no need for it. The Spanish have outlawed it (although Bellingham gets away with it). It’s time we did.” 

That’s a direct quote from his blog, written next to a picture of Conor Gallagher’s holey socks, by the way.

Interestingly, different players prefer different configurations of holes. Kyle Walker opts for a polka dot-esque approach, Jude tends to go for just two or three larger holes, whilst Conor Gallagher and Bukayo Saka are strictly two-hole men.

Socks, we’re talking about socks.

Why, though?

Well, Bellingham says it’s to relieve pressure on his calves. Makes sense to us. The scientists aren’t having it, like. Dr. Raj Brar told the people over at Tifo:

“One way of medically reducing pressure on the calves is using high pressure compression socks between games as a recovery measure. That will increase circulation and reduce swelling to varying degrees based on the level of pressure of the sock.

“Besides, footballers get more than enough activity through their calves to not worry about circulation.”

The thing is, right, is that we’ve all played the game, and we’ve all felt the aches and cramps that tight-fitting socks seem to bring on. We’re absolutely not going to sit here and contradict actual experts—Dr. Brar is infinitely more qualified than we are on such matters. However…

Anecdotally, it’s just one of those things we all know to be true. If you grew up playing football in the noughties or even the late 90s, you’ve almost certainly wrapped some masking tape around the bottom of your socks in an attempt to keep your shinpads up, and you know the pain that brings.

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Also, just whilst we’re at it, back in the day, footballers used to wear sock ties around the top of their socks just to keep them from falling down. So you can tell your dad (and Richard Keys) to calm the f*ck down because Billy Bonds and Stuart Pearce never had to deal with skin-tight socks.

And it’s not an aesthetic thing, either. So you can give that a rest too, boomers. In fact, some of the older football fans seem more bothered about aesthetics than functionality. Jose Mourinho posted a picture of a footballer’s calves, adorned in hole-riddled socks, on Instagram alongside the caption:

“Beautiful socks for the Beautiful Game… Approved by the football authorities 😬😬😬”

We reckon they’re Danny Rose’s calves. What you saying?

The triple emoji is strong. There’s a bigger picture here, though. Something that simply doesn’t make sense to us, and it’s this:

Why don’t sportswear manufacturers just make good socks?

That sounds silly but we’re deadly serious. For a decade or so now, almost every professional footballer in the game has been wearing grip socks on their feet, cutting the feet off of their actual team socks, and wearing the remaining tube of their official kit socks over their calves purely because the rulebook says they have to.

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Why not just apply the grippy technology to actual football socks? It can’t be difficult, surely? Unless brands that make the football socks have shares in the grippy sock companies… Oh my god, that’s it, isn’t it? We’re blowing this sh*t wide open.

Probably not, actually.

Still, the same concept applies to the rest of the football sock. If they’re too tight, as an awful lot of pro footballers seem to think they are, then, regardless of the science, why not just give the players (and your dad, and your mam, and Richard bloody Keys) what they want, and make the socks a little looser?

They don’t need to be tight to keep shinpads in place—you can throw that theory down the sh*tter. Most shinpads come with little breathable net tube things that keep them in place without feeling tight.

The problem is that most socks are made out of a little bit of cotton, but almost 90% polyester. Why? Because compared to the old cotton socks, they don’t retain water and they keep their shape—no more sock ties.

Surely, though—and we don’t want to sound like the aforementioned hairy-handed fella here but—common sense must prevail. Literally no part of the modern-day football sock is fit for purpose.

Just make them a bit looser-fitting, and put the grippy stuff on the bottom, then we can all move on and enjoy the game we all love without getting into a circular discussion about blood flow and Jack Grealish’s calves with our Uncle Steve. Cheers. 

By Andrew Martin