Mark OgdenApr 21, 2026, 09:35 AM ETCloseMark Ogden is a senior soccer writer for ESPN.com. Read his archive here and follow him on Twitter: @MarkOgden_.Follow on XMultiple Authors
Shin pad expert says pros can ‘make their own decisions’ after injury concern (2:12)Speaking to Mark Ogden, Zack Chislett of Joga Shin Pads says it is “the player’s decision” whether to wear tiny shin pads. (2:12)
Until recently, shin guards covered the entire shin — sometimes up to 9 inches long — and they were made of foam or rubber with a hard plastic shell. But in recent years, some players have abandoned the protective element completely, wearing only tiny pieces of foam under their socks, and it seems only a matter of time before a serious injury leads to a rethink in what players are wearing.
Lewis Holtby’s injury, sustained while playing for Dutch team NAC Breda against Fortuna Sittard in the Eredivisie on April 12, looks to have ended the 35-year-old’s season due to the depth of the wound on his left shin following a challenge with an opposition defender. It also led to a blame game centred on Holtby’s shin guards.
“They [players] are now wearing those tiny things, or basically toilet paper, just to have something there,” Perez said. “I have absolutely no sympathy for injuries that result from that.
“If you get kicked on your shin and your shin pad is that size of an Airpod, then obviously that’s a big problem,” Van Dijk said.
Brighton forward Danny Welbeck has said that his younger teammates ridicule his old-school shin pads — “They say to me ‘your shinnies are massive,’ but you need a bit more safety, you know?” — but just like Saka, Fulham winger Alex Iwobi prefers the small, lightweight guards because “I just don’t like having something heavy on my shin.”
“The reason we changed the Law was because it is impossible to legislate and say a shin pad must be a certain size,” David Elleray, IFAB Technical Director and former Premier League referee told ESPN. “So two years ago, we put the responsibility on the players that they should wear something which they believe protects them.
“The challenge we had was partly legal. If we left the responsibility with the referees and the referees said, “Okay, that shin guard is okay,” then the player got injured, the player might decide to take action. So we put that very firmly in the court of the players and the coaches, and for young players, the parents.”
The change of the Law has led to players placing speed and aesthetics — many dislike the bulk of larger shin pads — above safety, however, and Elleray admits it has not led to a sensible approach by players and clubs.
“We [IFAB] had hoped, or expected, that they would take a responsible attitude to it, but there was one recently [Marcus Edwards] that was almost like a sticking plaster,” Elleray said. “The pressure needs to go on the individual players, the coaches and the clubs to make sure their players are protected because it’s impossible to legislate for.”
Former leading referee Pierluigi Collina, now the Chair of the FIFA referees’ committee, has urged players to be more mindful of their wellbeing when choosing their shin guards. “At the end of the day, the shin pad rule is for their own safety,” Collina told ESPN. “So they should care of what is really safe for them.”
But as shocking as Holtby’s injury was, it perhaps generated such attention because of the rarity of such incidents. Broken legs and deep cuts and gashes seem less prevalent despite the reduction in shin pad sizes, with muscle tears and ligament injuries to ankle and knee more likely to sideline a player.
Sources at the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) have told ESPN that “primary decisions around safety are taken by players in consultation with their club and medical teams” and that players ultimately “feel comfortable with different shapes and sizes of shin pads.” There is certainly no drive within the game to force players to re-think the protection being offered by their shin pads.
Football trends have changed since larger and heavier shin pads were the go-to model for top players. The Umbro Armadillo, which was manufactured during the early-2000s, was a large plastic guard with ankle protectors and was worn by Michael Owen and Alan Shearer, while Brazil forward Ronaldo wore Nike’s T90 model. Both designs were significantly larger, heavier and stronger than the pads now being preferred.
“We were the first ones to make a mini shin pad that you could buy,” Zack Chislett told ESPN. “I was playing non-league at the time, my brother Ethan was playing for AFC Wimbledon, and we noticed that pads were getting smaller and smaller, but there was no-one giving players an option to buy them. They were just using anything they could find in the physio’s bag, so the demand was obviously there.”
“When you’re training the whole week without shin pads and you then put the big pad on, sometimes with ankle pads, on a Saturday, it doesn’t feel natural like when you’re training,” Zack said. “Some players will feel better with the big shin pad, but a lot of the younger, more attacking players don’t feel that way and they don’t want to feel as restricted when they go on the pitch.
“And the game has changed, 100%. The tackles aren’t coming in like they used to, it isn’t as aggressive or as physical. I’m 23 and players of my generation just don’t want to wear big shin pads — it would be like wearing old, heavy leather boots. It just isn’t going to happen.”
The likes of Welbeck and van Dijk are being usurped by players such as Saka, Iwobi, Grealish and Joao Pedro when it comes to the size and protective elements of their shin pads.
Prior to the change, the responsibility was on referees to police the rule, but many were being ignored by players and clubs and then criticised — or even sometimes challenged in court — for failing to impose the rules if a player was subsequently injured. But the Law remains vague and open to interpretation. There is no minimum size required, only that the shin pads are “covered entirely by the socks, are made of suitable material (rubber, plastic or similar substances) and provide a reasonable degree of protection.”
Today’s younger players prefer small, lightweight pads and the shifting trend led two brothers — Kaizer Chiefs midfielder Ethan Chislett and Zack, who plays for UAE-based Palm City — to develop their brand of Joga shinpads, which are tiny, much lighter and softer than traditional pads. The Joga Shinpad Sleeve, worn by Chelsea’s João Pedro, is an iPhone-sized soft pad within a fabric sleeve that’s worn to cover the shin. Everton midfielder Grealish wears Joga’s Breathe pads that measure just 6 cm x 10 cm (2 inches x 4 inches).
Shin pad expert says pros can ‘make their own decisions’ after injury concern (2:12)Speaking to Mark Ogden, Zack Chislett of Joga Shin Pads says it is “the player’s decision” whether to wear tiny shin pads. (2:12)
Speaking to Mark Ogden, Zack Chislett of Joga Shin Pads says it is “the player’s decision” whether to wear tiny shin pads. (2:12)
Mark OgdenApr 21, 2026, 09:35 AM ETCloseMark Ogden is a senior soccer writer for ESPN.com. Read his archive here and follow him on Twitter: @MarkOgden_.Follow on XMultiple Authors
CloseMark Ogden is a senior soccer writer for ESPN.com. Read his archive here and follow him on Twitter: @MarkOgden_.Follow on X
La aparatosa lesión de Lewis Holtby este fin de semana. 😬Vía ESPNnl/X pic.twitter.com/WgHl4PL5xo
“As a club, you can simply say: we require our players to wear proper shin guards.”
Former England and Liverpool forward Peter Crouch regularly raises the shin pad issue on his podcast, That Peter Crouch Podcast, under the light-hearted “Make Shin Pads Great Again” banner, with Fulham midfielder Harry Wilson saying this season that some of his teammates “cut up the sponge you get from the physio and use that.”
The argument put forward by those who favour small shin pads is that players no longer suffer serious impact injuries, and that may be a valid point. In a recent example of a bad impact injury, Liverpool’s Alexander Isak was wearing small — but not tiny — shin pads when he suffered a fractured leg in a challenge with Tottenham’s Micky van de Ven last December, but it would be difficult to argue that larger shin pads would have diminished the severity of Isak’s injury.
But why do young players want their shin pads to be so small and lacking in protection?
The trend towards smaller shin pads — and away from larger models that would also include ankle protectors — is rooted in many things, including the game becoming less physical with fewer tackles and players wanting to feel as light as possible to boost their sprinting speed. But it is also a result of a change in the Laws of the Game in July 2024 when IFAB (the International Football Association Board) amended the rule covering shin pads (Law 4) to place the responsibility on the player rather than the match officials to ensure sufficient shin protection was worn.