It’s one of those things that becomes obvious with hindsight – that brands don’t necessarily make football shoes good for your feet and that you need to extensively test football boots before committing yourself to them in a proper game to minimise any injury risk.

While the likes of Nike (with their Mercurial Vapor IV – and an excellent promotion campaign) focus on performance attributes such as improving speed (you run faster because your football boots are lighter – something I never figured out with my lead-laden shoes), upcoming football shoes brand Nomis are focusing on injury prevention.

Statistics can be bent to prove almost anything, so I’m not going to argue on whether Nomis is superior to Nike or vice versa. What I will say though, is this: focusing on injury prevention (or minimisation) is just as important, if not more, than performance. What’s more, several factors overlap in both areas (shoes need to be light-weight, they need to fit your feet and not the other way around, they must be flexible but robust, etc etc) but more than just the football boot itself, it’s the training, the pitch you’re playing on and the rules (or lack thereof) that count.

Injury Prevention v Performance, it’s just two different marketing angles.

But you should ALWAYS try before you buy, and that’s where this gets interesting.

Their promoters are launching Nomis Sports AG via the Right Boot Store, currently debuting in Berlin.

The Right Boot Store is based on the fact that the human body is the perfect mechanism to compare the quality of one boot against another. Customers can simply walk into the store, choose a Right Boot that fits, take it home at absolutely no cost and test it by wearing their current boot on their left foot.

If customers prefer the Nomis Right Boot after 2 weeks, Nomis will send them the matching left boot and the price of a regular pair.

It’s one of those offers that you just can’t refuse – there’s nothing to lose and if you don’t like the shoe at the end of 2 weeks, presumably you can return it without any payments.

Good ad, and although I still prefer the Nike ad, there’s no arguing with the ‘Ask your feet’ philosophy.

One piece of advice though – it’s never smart to advertise that an injury-prone player like Harry Kewell wears your shoes, especially when your main promotion angle is injury prevention. If it hasn’t helped Harry…