Following the news yesterday that the FA is banning the publication of youth football results to avoid youngsters getting upset, a school in Essex has banned its students from using mouldable glue to enhance their football boots as it was deemed to give them an unfair advantage over the other players.
Students at the secondary school have been applying patches of the brightly coloured mouldable glue to keys areas of the boot to give them greater control of the ball. Sugru sticks to any surface like superglue and turns to waterproof rubber after 24 hours.
Students found that the rubbery patches provided better grip of the ball, more power when shooting, and enabled more swerve compared with traditional leather.
Sugru has been applied to the sides and toe portion of the football boots, and kids have experimented with different patterns and indentations to both enhance their skills on the pitch and personalise the look of their boots.
However, Sugru’s inventor is adament the creativity and initiative shown by the students at the shool should be celebrated, and not seen as ‘naughty’.
In order to test the impact of Sugru on the performance of football boots, Sugru enlisted the help of professional football freestyler and Guinness World Record holder, John Farnworth to test some boots augmented with Sugru patches.