Quite with unique fashion one of the best players of the Japanese national football team, Nakamura Keito, who has performed excellently so far at the World Cup, noticed himself in sports leggings that went down to his ankles and, according to him, plays in a very minimal shin guard.
As evidenced by the pictures, in his club Reims, which is in the French second division, he alternates when he has the sports leg on his leg, it happens – for example in the cup match against the CL winner Paris Saint-Germain – that he pulls it up properly, as we are used to from soccer players, but in other matches he tolerates it as seen in the national team.
Of course, there is no problem with this, but the question arises, if the sports upper reaches just a few centimeters above the shoe, then where do you put your shin guard. According to Nakamura, he uses a very small piece of protective equipment so that he is as little hindered in his movement as possible.
By the way, this is not against the rules, in the FIFA rule book (which is also available on the MLSZ website, for example in pdf format) says only about the shin guards that “they must be made of a material providing an adequate degree of protection and of the appropriate size and must be covered by the sports leggings. The size and suitability of the shin guards are the responsibility of the players”. In other words, if Nakamura does not wear a shin guard, it is his decision and responsibility.
Nakamura Keito in the pulled-down socks, next to him is Daicsi Kamada in the above-the-knee sports leg – Photo: Kai Pfaffenbach / Reuters
The minimal sports leg is not unique to Nakamura alone. For the Norwegians, Torbjørn Heggem played in much shorter sports legs than usual, and although he is not in the English national team now, Jack Grealish, who played there 39 times before, also minimized the role of the equipment. It’s true, he’s superstitious, because once his sports legs fell apart in the wash.
The punching remained
We are used to it from the various big tournaments that some players cut huge holes in their sports socks so that they don’t stretch their calves so much. This is no different now: the German Leroy Sané settles the issue with one big hole, the English Bukayo Saka makes two small holes, while his compatriot Jude Bellingham sometimes cuts up to three holes in the socks, but more than that can happen.
Jude Bellingham’s pierced sports legs – Photo: Buda Mendes / Getty Images
