Why Have Footballers Started Wearing Small Shin Pads?

[Iliya.Kravets]

The answer is each player must wear pads, so they choose the smallest available

[mountainbikerdave]

With smaller shin pads you can get a better feeling of when another player has grazed you, so you know when to collapse and start rolling around in sheer agony.

[Miss_Hoolie]

My shin pads used to connect to my ankle and looked like a wicket keeper

[cornthdl]

Most importantly because shin pads really do nothing anyway. Where you get tackled/hit most of the time is not the shins.

[olivierdrinkwater]

I collided with a player going same speed in the same area location (shin). I wore good shin pads, he didn’t wear any. He broke a bone in his shin leg area, I was okay. Trust me, good shin pads work.

[braziluss]

A slide tackle can produce over 9000 newtons of force which is 3 times the average force needed to break a humans shin

[minimanukuk]

I remember plying with the old school books in my socks when forgetting shinnies 😂

[rahulCrrealmadrid]

Medium size shin pads are good because we are wearing shin guards to protect our shin from big injury and because of that smaller shin guards are only designed for comfort and easy wearing. So you have to start wear a medium size shin guard and I'm sure that it will not cause you any type of irritation or discomfort if you wear it properly.

[michaelscott]

It's a loophole in the laws of the game. They say you have to wear pads of a suitable material but don't specify a size. To be honest I expect IFAB will close it in the not too distant future.

[obinnaobiekwe]

The reason people wear smaller pads these days is cos things are changing & so tackles aren't as horrendous as used to. This is especially in top professional leagues, of course. There's now so much protection that players don't want to do anything harsh to get sent off and be out for 3 matches.

I can't speak for amateurs, low level leagues and semi pro teams, though.
Those ones tend to gleefully brag about who & who they horrendously tackled.

[VRRitchie]

In my time, we had pads from the feet to the knee

[MannerlessBrute]

The game is super level safe these days. Diving was not even a thing back then

[robwiley]

I was playing semi -Pro football in the late 90s. Even then quite a few of the players were wearing children's size shin pads.
I never really understood why.
It's a rule that shin.pads must be worn. The rules is in place to protect the players.
I don't believe the adult size shin pads that I was wearing slowed me down.

[sickunt]

Also shin pads make the ball bounce off your leg further away than your shin would.

[Natasoul]

Kind of like in American football, at least in my Highschool, we usually wear out knee pads above our knee

[Kassiem_]

All fun and games till you break your leg. . . It's the same with seatbelts, you are not gonna crash everyday (hopefully not), but you wear it properly and everyday so that it does its job correctly for that 1 day that you do unfortunately crash.

[matekovacs]

I'm always playing with the first shinpad I got when I started to play. It covers like 2/3 of my shin and it is still comfortable and protected my shin more times than I can count.

[DotyFuzz]

Carrier ending injury: let me introduce myself

[oodlenoodle]

Im sure if they wanted too. They can have proper sized custom fit for there specific size, that will offer protection & comfort.

[fazalhanafichaudhry]

The way football is played today they don’t need shin pads…