If your feet hurt after games, or your kid keeps complaining about their cleats, or you've already tried a pair of New Balance "wide" cleats and they still didn't fit right, this is for you. Here's why football cleats are built so narrow, and what your actual options are.
Why so narrow?
One of these matches the shape of a healthy foot. Guess which.
It's not close. Prevolve's custom 3D printed cleats match a healthy foot shape, and Nike and the other big brands don't: extremely narrow toe boxes, looks over function, every time. If you think I'm exaggerating, there's a clip from Nike's own recent film where they admit exactly that, that looks have always come before function. The Air Jordan, the most popular shoe they've ever made, was built on that thinking. Why would they change course for the rest of the line?
Nike, in their own words, on choosing looks over function.
Big corporations optimize for sales, not for your foot health, and that's not exactly a controversial statement. So what actually exists for someone who wants to keep their foot health while playing football?
Healthy football cleats
First, and this is obviously the one I'd point you to: Prevolve Footwear's BioCleats ($595 - $795).
Front and bottom views of a lineman build.
Fully custom fit, wide toe box, flexible sole plate, built to meet you exactly where you are in your foot strengthening journey. Your foot scans and biometrics feed straight into the algorithm that generates the design, so every pair is specific to the foot that's wearing it.
You can add custom fit modular Toe Spacers ($95) and a full 5-level set of Metpad Insoles ($95) to accelerate the rest of your foot's recovery.
Toe spacers and metpad insoles, sold separately or alongside your cleats.
Stud options can be picked at checkout, and choosing any color beyond the standard set costs an extra $90. Right now the standard colorways are:
Your weight and position feed into the design too, and because we're not locked into a mold, improvements happen fast.
We guarantee the fit and the durability, and offer a full refund before 30 days, so there's not much risk in trying.
Beyond that, the list of wide minimalist football cleats gets short fast. I'd genuinely like to be wrong about this, but as far as I know nobody else is making wide, minimalist football cleats. The one brand worth mentioning is New Balance Football.
New Balance offers three width sizes.
As far as we can tell, those width sizes just add more upper material, more volume inside the shoe. The cleat plate and toe box keep the same form factor underneath, which still means squished toes and the same inefficient biomechanics.
Outside football, two minimalist soccer brands are worth a look if you're willing to adapt a soccer cleat: Naturathletics ($159), the widest standardized fit on the market, and FreeKickz ($159), with a wider standardized toe box.
Naturathletics and FreeKickz, both wider than standard, neither built for football.
Both have flexible sole plates and wider toe boxes, but they're not built for football and don't have the cushion or traction of Prevolve's custom football cleats. They're also a lot cheaper, since they're not fully custom.
Built for the position, not the average.