Tell me how you wear socks and I'll tell you what player you are From Sivori's uncovered shank to Henry's covered knee, through Nainggolan's holey socks and Suarez's Trusox

Every footballer who goes on the pitch has his own ritual that accompanies him: there are those who isolate themselves thanks to headphones, those who have to telephone their mothers and those who, like Cassano at Real Madrid, have to satisfy their desires. It is said that the Brazilians manage to take the field only thanks to a Samba-based heating. These gestures are now the only freedoms of expression - eccentric shoes excluded - in a football that is becoming more and more homologated.

The uniforms, however flashy they may have become - either for whimsical designs, or for colors that no longer have anything to do with the original social colors - leave no room for the player's creativity. In addition, from next season even the fonts of name and number will be standardized, as already happens in Premier. More recently, some captains - Papu Gomez most of all - had tried to express their originality through the personalized captain's armbands, but the League has standardized those too.

One of the elements that represented a distinctive feature of some players were the socks and the style with which they were seen on the various soccer fields; by 1996 the ''Del Piero laces'' had become iconic, shoe laces that the Juventus number 10 used to tie the top of the socks so that they did not fall on the shin guard, without thinking that he would launch a fashion: all children who grew up in the second half of the 90s therefore began to deprive themselves of the shoelaces while having tied them to the socks, just like "Pinturicchio".

Nothing has changed with the obligation to use shinguards. Whether it's because you want to intimidate your opponent, or because you want to be less protected, the more technical players will always play with their socks down. Maybe to show the last tattoo on the calf - the crowned ball of Dybala - but above all to instigate the hitting defenders and to remind everyone that real football is what is played in the "barrios" and there the tibias are uncovered.