The Kings and I: Puma's classic boots beckon me back from brief Umbro betrayal

The Guardian

27-03-2025

There is something indescribably beautiful about finding a pair of football boots that fit you perfectly. It is like Cinderella's glass slippers – your foot just slides in, the instep and arches ensconced in the cushioning – or putting Excalibur back in the stone. Until you go out on the pitch, anything is possible.
That boot for me is the Puma King. To be clear, this isn't an advertorial – Herr Puma hasn't given me a brown envelope, or a pair of boots. They are just the boots that fit. If I had slightly narrower feet and there's no doubt I would be in the pocket of big Copa Mundial.
However, since I had my own bank account and my own mind, I have given over three decades to amateur football accompanied by the pure black leather and big white tongue of those boots. I haven't always been faithful. Mum put me in Dunlops in the mid-80s. I flirted with Nike Tiempos for a time, but I've always come back.
I can stare at those boots sitting on the shoe rack for hours. The promise they bring: of playing a side-footed pass, of bringing a ball out of the sky with the stitching on the instep or catching a half-volley and caressing it into the back of the net. (Time since last goal: a season and a half. Own goals scored in that time: two.)
The issues really start just above the boot. My hip-groin expert has discovered more arthritis than seems ideal for a 45-year-old. I spend 15 minutes a day with one end of a giant rubber band tied to a broomhandle and the other wedged in the back door, trying to activate muscles that have lain dormant for the best part of half a century.
The season in Australia starts imminently and contract negotiations have been tense. My second son, named after his great-grandfather and Through the Keyhole stalwart Willie Rushton, arrived eight weeks ago.
It appears a given for professional male footballers to turn up to the birth and then get back on the pitch: 'Been a busy couple of days for Bamford – his wife gave birth yesterday' … Don Goodman: 'Ooooh I remember those sleepless nights Bill' … Bill Leslie: 'Here come Sheffield United down the right.'
It would be refreshing to hear a more accurate reflection: 'No Kulusevski – he's missing the next eight weeks because his wife is postpartum and she has quite correctly pointed out that leaving the house and two children for four hours on a Sunday afternoon just because football means a lot to you while she still can't go for a 30-minute swim and you haven't found a babysitter isn't parenting in 2025.'
But the boots keep staring. This pair of moulds has been with me since before the pandemic. From the Quintin Hogg Memorial ground in Chiswick to Princes Park in Melbourne. They are older than the kids; they might even remember Trump's first presidency.
Nothing lasts for ever – the frayed stitching, the increasing gap between the sole and the leather at both toes. Even the seams are coming apart at the seams.
Here is where I made a fateful mistake. An act of betrayal. Buoyed by increasing activity in my team's WhatsApp group, Strava maps, friendly fixtures and new players – it was time. New boots, new me.
Anyone old enough to remember the release of the original Adidas Predators will remember thinking: 'How much better could these boots make me? I'll be bending it around corners. It'll be like taking a free-kick in Kick Off 2 on the Amiga.' And then some guy turned up to school trials with a pair and it became abundantly clear that the boots don't make the player.
In my fervour I forgot this. My nearest boot emporium – a cavernous world of footballing joy – even has a five-a-side pitch in the middle of it, the boot area a cacophony of colour and blades and studs and swooshes.
The one issue: no Puma Kings. I should have hesitated, I should have stayed loyal. However, in the heat of the moment we all err. I stuck on some Copas – too narrow. Was there anything else? Black boots only?
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The Umbro Speciali have a beautiful unfancied clogger centre-back vibe to them. They could work in the centre of the park – just getting it on the half-turn, taking half an hour to half-turn the other way and giving it simple.
I put them on over the store football socks; they felt good. On a wild impulse there and then I signed a two-boot deal with Umbro. One left. One right.
Years ago I remember reading that Ole Gunnar Solskjær would sit for hours in the bath with new boots to mould them around his feet. But with no bath in the house, I would just have to get to the park and do some shuttle runs and re-enact some turn-and-face backwards jogging. It hit me straight away, before even kicking a ball. These boots were not an extension of my body. It's not them, it's me. They have done no wrong. For another slightly bigger foot, these guys would excel.
Sure, they can do a job, like Kieran Trippier at left-back, but can I commit to them? Then one night while idly doom-scrolling emerged two minutes of complete joy and happiness.
An advert for a special pair of Puma Kings: 'the Super-Archive' in association with Mundial Magazine. The ad stars a Sunday League hacker being transported to Germany, where he's yelled at by Lothar Matthäus before being kitted out with a pair of boots that reflect the legends who wore them – Maradona, Eusébio, Cruyff – and the magazine itself.
Mundial is a wonderful thing, a celebration of why we love football. It is unashamedly hipster: all Utrecht away kits and Jackson Irvine perusing the flea markets of Berlin. For a centrist dad like me, some of it can get a little anoraky about, say, anoraks. But it is good people doing good things, taking you away from goal involvements and the race for fifth place and sportswashing and online debates about whether Trent is a traitor. It celebrates the history and stories of football all over the world and how different parts of the game move us in different ways. It was meant to be. Add to basket.
Boots may mean nothing to you – just the thing people put on their feet – but for some of us they are beauty and hope and possibility. If anyone wants to lend me their bath to really break them in, let me know.