Why do so many footballers wear these socks?

Although they make up one-third of each team's kit, socks are probably the most undervalued item within the uniform. Omar Sivori, who wears low-socks with a rocker attitude, has fuelled the fascination around playing socks at a time when football style was not yet as coded as it is now. Today it often happens to notice footballers' socks featuring small 'dots', which can be glimpsed under the socks and just above the shoe. These are revolutionary socks that in recent years have made their way globally, recognizable through those rubber 'dots' on the heel: the Trusox. 

Trusox is an American company founded in 2007, and as often happens in these cases, the creation of socks comes from the practical experience of athletes. The former footballer with a past in the minors Jim Cherneski, tired of feeling his foot move inside the shoe, decided to design a pair of socks with small dots lining the inside and outside in order to increase the grip inside the shoes. The creation of Cherneski immediately caught on and soon many sportsmen and women started using them, from baseball to American football, cricket, rugby and, of course, football. The first footballer to wear a pair of Trusox shoes was former Chelsea player Victor Moses, but within a short time sales literally skyrocketed. According to Cherneski, around 30% of Premier League players wear Trusox, not counting the massive use in the major European championships.

In addition to Luis Suarez, the only Trusox sponsored footballer by 2016, many athletes are wearing them spontaneously, so much so as to create some conflict of interest between sponsors. With the exception of shoes, it's not common to see sportswear brands overlapping inside the kits, for most athletes it's even forbidden given the sponsorship contracts that don't allow to show other logos (you'll remember in this regard the story related to Allan Saint-Maximin who wore a headband with the Gucci logo in evidence, which nss had talked about here). The teams try to hide the Trusox under their socks, which have to be cut and slipped over the socks created by Cherneski. In this way, the dots remain visible, creating more than a few problems for the players. One MLS player (who asked to remain anonymous) said he had to pay $5000 to the federation for not wearing socks from his sponsor, to which he obviously preferred Trusox. Because of the very strict referee Kuipers, in a Champions League match between Borussia Mönchengladbach and Juventus, Alvaro Morata was forced to leave the field to take off the Trusox, which were different from the colour of the socks.

The American company has started to produce Trusox in many colourways to match the exact colour of the kits. But beyond the attempts to 'hide' the socks, the idea that footballers like so much continues to annoy kit suppliers and even federations. During the 2018 World Cup, for example, the captain of the Swedish national team Andreas Granqvist and the players of the English national team were fined by FIFA - which has adidas as a sponsor - of around 50,000 euros, enforcing the strict rules of the largest FA in football. Although these cases are frequent, at the moment the war between sponsors and Trusox is open, forcing the players to find a way to avoid the fines of the federations.