Football socks should really be among the least interesting things about a footballer.
Everton, however, appear to be assembling a collection of players determined to prove otherwise.
Tyler Dibling’s arrival on the scene last night has added another member to the Blues’ growing low-socks club, with the teenager joining Jack Grealish and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall in preferring the ankle-hugging look rather than the more traditional socks-up-to-the-knee approach.
And once you’ve noticed it, it’s surprisingly difficult to stop.
Dibling was an ankle-hugger long before Everton
For Dibling, though, this is no attempt to copy his new Everton team-mates.
His low socks were already something of a trademark at Southampton, where he explained that England youth team-mate Jimmy-Jay Morgan had suggested he try wearing them that way.
Dibling did so against Portugal, played well and stuck with it. He later admitted he hated playing with his socks pulled up because it felt “weird”, while the lower look was more comfortable and, in his view, suited him better.
There is a touch of Grealish about the story. Everton’s No.10 has long been one of football’s most famous members of the low-sock brigade, having adopted the style as a youngster when his training socks shrank, and he could no longer pull them over his calves.
Grealish played well in them, superstition took over, and the look stayed.
Even Mykolenko is letting his socks slip
Then there is Dewsbury-Hall.
As we discovered earlier this season, his preference for minimal shin pads and low socks comes with an explanation of its own.
The calves.
And now, perhaps most unexpectedly, Vitalii Mykolenko appears to be joining the club.
For so long one of Everton’s sock traditionalists, the Ukrainian has recently started wearing his lower too. He’s not quite ready to go full Grealish, Dibling or Dewsbury-Hall – there are still a few precious centimetres between Mykolenko and the micro-shin-pad kings – but the direction of travel is clear.
At this rate, the traditional knee-high sock could soon be an endangered species at the Hill Dickinson.
For those of us of a certain vintage, brought up in an era when football socks were supposed to travel north until they could travel no further, it all looks slightly odd. For younger Evertonians, perhaps not.
Footballers have always had their little trademarks: shirt out or tucked in, long sleeves or short, tape around the wrists, particular boots, haircuts and now, increasingly, shin pads seemingly designed for a seven-year-old.
Dibling, Grealish and Dewsbury-Hall are firmly committed to the cause. Mykolenko appears to be dipping a toe – or perhaps an ankle – into it.
And given Dibling’s performance against Wolves last night, nobody at the Hill Dickinson is likely to be asking him to pull them up any time soon.
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