This week, Aston Villa star Jack Grealish has finally gotten rid of his football boots dubbed his ‘lucky boots’ after they got him firing again following a spell on the sidelines. They shot to fame at the back end of the 2018/19 season after fans remarked on their sorry state – not least the fact that Grealish’s toes almost showed through the ends of them. Fans everywhere had been speculating whether the lucky boots might make an appearance in the Premier League following Villa’s Play-Off triumph. Alas, it was not to be.
While the decimated boots may appear to have been worthless to the casual observer, their value to Grealish was apparently insurmountable, highlighting the tendency in footballers towards superstition. There are plenty of other examples of this.
The Greats
Five-time Ballon D’Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo may make being a top footballer look effortless, but teammates of the Portugal skipper stress that the man himself relies heavily on his tried and tested superstitions. Among these are his propensity to sit at the back of the team coach, on the front of the plane and to always adjust his hair at half-time. Such success would seem to indicate that there may be merit in these particular behaviours, though the superstitions of other successful players suggest otherwise.
Legendary Dutchman Johan Cruyff would spit chewing-gum at the opposing team’s goal pre-match. In the 1969 European Cup Final, the mercurial talent left his gum at home and his Ajax side lost 4-1 to A.C. Milan, seemingly proving Cruyff’s theory. Elsewhere, Brazil legend Pele once asked a fan to give back a shirt he had donated after a match. The fan obliged and donning the returned strip led to a miraculous return to form for the striker.
What is evident is that footballers are very much creatures of habit, characterised by their self-belief. That belief would appear to extend to seemingly fruitless choices like which seat on the bus or actions like tying one’s shoelaces. If the Grealish boots show us anything, it is that continuity remains key for the top talents in world football.
The Lesser-known Traditions
These beliefs would seem to extend to the wider footballing community and are not reserved for the very best players. Indeed, it would seem in many cases that the more obscure the individual, the stranger the superstition. A case in point would be Romanian striker Adrian Mutu, who once admitted that he had had a Macbeth-esque run-in with a coven of witches, who warned that he had been cursed by an ex-lover. Former Chelsea man Mutu is said to have protected himself from the curse by wearing his briefs inside-out from that point onward. Given how abruptly his Chelsea career then collapsed, it would suggest that this method wasn’t successful, but there are other alternatives to ward away spirits and find out the future. Tarot readings are a way to get a glimpse of what the future has in store, and there are also palm readings and mediums to use for those who are superstitious.
Meanwhile, Mutu’s teammate John Terry, while far less obscure, was no less odd in defiantly using the same urinal in the Chelsea changing room for the entirety of his very successful career at the club. The superstition seems to extend to the money-men in football too, when you consider that Cardiff City owner Vincent Tan will only sign players with a lucky number eight in their birth-date and that former Leeds owner Massimo Cellino would remove seat number 17 from his club’s stadiums due to the bad luck it brought.
Many of these choices do in fact reflect on us as human beings. We prefer to put our faith in mystical forces beyond what we can see to help us make illuminated decisions that we feel comfortable with and confident in. On the pitch, footballers have to trust in themselves, which may justify why they take their suspicions off the pitch so seriously.
We have seen some of the simple and some of the more unusual superstitions of footballers and these don’t even scratch the surface. There will always be one at your favourite club who rejects shin-pads or wears a lucky sweatband. Apparently, it’s human nature.
