Buy Your Players a Boot Brush
End of season. The games are done. You've coached your socks off since August — multiple teams, state cup on top of the league schedule, evenings with no lights, weekends that belong to soccer more than to your family. And now, finally, you get to breathe.
Before you do — what are you doing for your players?
Not a big end-of-season party necessarily, or a player of the year trophy (although I grew up wanting to win manager's player more than I wanted to win most games). I'm talking about something smaller and more intentional. Something with meaning attached to it.
Here's what I do. I buy them all a boot brush.
Why Boots Matter to Me
This isn't random. Boots are personal. I grew up around the game in a way where clean boots weren't optional — they were the standard. As a young academy player at Northampton Town, cleaning the senior players' boots was part of the deal. You showed up early. You did the work. And the boot room was sacred — anyone who's been to Anfield knows about Liverpool's boot room, the meetings held in there, the history on those walls. Boots meant you were serious.
I still love getting a new pair. Still love unboxing them. I buy them for myself and I feel something when I do. That matters. That connection to the game through what's on your feet — I want my players to have a version of that.
Right now? Most of them don't. They kick their boots on in the car. They walk across the parking lot in them. They take them off and shove them in a bag, muddy and full of rubber crumb, and forget about them until the next session when they fish them out and wonder why everything feels wrong. The boots are an afterthought.
The Dollar Tree Argument
Here's the practical case: go to Dollar Tree. One dollar a brush. You coach three teams — twenty players each, roughly — you're spending $40 to $50 on something that will last the whole next season.
What does it do? It gives them a standard they're now accountable to. Your boots are clean when you arrive. Not because I'm going to inspect them at the gate, but because you care enough about this game to look after the one piece of equipment you actually need to play it. And it means something to me that my players walk onto a training field or a match field with a pair of clean boots. It tells me they're ready.
It's also not nothing on the environmental side — there's something like half a ton of rubber crumb that leaves a turf field every season on the bottom of players' shoes. Clean the boots, put the crumb back. Small thing. Adds up.
The Game Face
If you've heard my episode with sports psychologist Dan Abrahams, you'll remember the idea of a game face — the ritual that flips the switch from everyday life into competitive mode. The wrestler puts on a mask. The boxer wraps his hands. Something happens that says: I'm not that person right now, I'm this person.
My daughter watches Blippi. And I'm pretty sure when that guy puts on the hat and the suspenders, he becomes Blippi. He's not Blippi at the supermarket. But when the hat goes on, it's showtime.
The boots can be that for your players. The moment they lace them up isn't just logistical — it's a signal. We're here. We're doing this. Everything else is off. And if the boots are clean, if there's a ritual around cleaning them and putting them on properly, that signal lands differently than if they're just kicking on a mud-caked pair they haven't thought about since last week.
Accountability is a Skill Too
Here's the other reason this matters. How many of your players show up with a parent carrying their bag? How many of your older players forget something because their parents aren't carrying it for them anymore and they haven't built the habit of remembering it themselves?
Parents driving twenty minutes each way to drop off a forgotten shin guard — that's real. It happens every week at clubs everywhere. And we can build something against it.
The boot brush is a small entry point into accountability. Your bag is your responsibility. Your kit is your responsibility. Your boots are your responsibility. You know you're going to need them. Clean them, put them in the bag, and when you arrive, you'll have them — and they'll be ready to go.
If boots aren't your thing, same logic applies. Slides — so they're not walking across the parking lot in their soccer shoes. Polish. A headband for the girls. A shin guard strap. Something specific to your team that says: this is ours, this is what we do. The object matters less than the meaning you attach to it.
One Last Thing
The holidays are coming, the World Cup is happening, and players are more engaged with the game than at almost any other time of year. There's never a better moment to build something small into your team culture that could outlast the season.
A boot brush from Dollar Tree. Forty bucks for your whole squad. A conversation about what it means.
That's the whole thing.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 75 — Buy Your Players a Boot Brush
@LeeDunneSoccer