Serafino 4th Edge review: The lowdown on the new innovative 'toe-poke' football boot

AN excited toddler presented proudly with his first football will instinctively kick it experimentally with his toe. It is then the job of the parents and every coach he grows up to meet to hammer home the fact that proper players kick with the instep or the side of the foot.

Then six years ago in Australia, somebody finally stopped the brow-beating for long enough to ask why.

Italian-Australian fashion designer John Serafino’s curiosity has since been moulded into the Serafino 4th Edge football boot, launched at Planet Hollywood in London yesterday by a string of former internationals.
Not since the Predator caused a storm in the early 1990s with its padded kangaroo leather uppers has a major new innovation in football boot design challenged conventional wisdom so fundamentally.
Don’t ostracise the old-fashioned “toe-poke”, the snub-nosed boot implores. Embrace it.

The rubberised cap which gives the boot a completely flat surface across the toes is designed to enable players to perform “toe pokes” with greater accuracy and power while at the same time needing only minimal backlift.
Triple padding and an Achilles support are additional features designed to reduce injury, particularly to the metatarsal, which have become an increasing problem in the game as boots have got lighter and lighter.
Former Sheffield United manager Nigel Clough has been involved with the testing team over the last six or seven months, trialling them with his players during practice sessions.
“The acceptance of the boot, especially the advantages of being able to kick accurately and consistently and with more power with the new moulded toe-cap, surprised me,” he said.
“I truly believe this boot is a real game-changer, with a big future. I only wish it could have been around when I was playing.”

Seven years younger than Clough Jr, I too was denied the opportunity. Yesterday I had 15 minutes to make up for lost time.

Clough was a full England international who lifted trophies for Nottingham Forest before gracing the Liverpool no. 7 shirt.
I was once made player-of-tournament in a media competition by Graham Poll because I was “surprisingly good for a player who bottom hangs that far out of his shorts” and on a separate occasion hit a 20-yard volley with such technique it elicited a “you must have played a bit once” from Gareth Southgate. But he was wrong.

But you don’t have to be a world-beater to recognise that this revolutionary design could make a difference.
Early plastic-nosed prototypes were banned by a panel of international referees but while the rubberised finished version is be more shin-friendly but it still gives the ball quite a ping.

Drilling the ball into the centre of the goal in Piccadilly’s Planet Hollywood with the instep allayed the immediate concern; that the strange design did not take away from a more traditional use of the boot. The toe-poke equivalent? Virtually unstoppable.
That extra burst of power in either penalty area could be the difference between having a shot blocked and scoring “a real goal poacher’s effort”, the politically-correct vernacular for poking the ball over the line. And a last gasp defender’s intervention would whizz away to safety rather than ricocheting into the path of a strike partner.
Then a massive unceremonious toe punt up-field fairly flies away from danger.
A more refined use of the technology means that, with a very late swivel of the ankle, you can disguise the intended direction of a short pass out wide or even a penalty.

From a practical point of view, a test at the University of Sydney to test the durability of the glue that sticks the toe-cap onto the end of the boot had to be suspended when the ball burst.
Supremely comfortable, in comparison with other high-end boots the response was generally a good one to the first 100 pairs to arrive in the country.
A thousand more are on their way – all in adult sizes, 7-11 – and it is unlikely to hit the usual retail outlets until next year.

By then, children’s sizes could well be available and that is perhaps where the revolution should start. A new way of kicking – even if it is really the oldest way – takes a new way of thinking.
And for forty-somethings like Clough and I of whatever ability, perhaps the boot has sailed.