There are a lot of soccer players today who use tape in order to cover some parts of their body while playing soccer. Mainly, many soccer players tape their wrists during a soccer match. There are a few reasons why a soccer player does that and you’ll find these reasons in this article.
The main reason some soccer players tape their wrists is because they want to protect themselves from severe wrists injuries. Wrists are joints and these joints are extremely vulnerable whenever the player falls on their hands. Using tape adds extra support to the wrist to make it stronger.
But that’s not the only reason behind using tape on wrists. Let’s discuss the main reason first, and later dive more into other reasons.
Soccer players tape their wrists to protect themselves from injuries.
Since soccer is a sport that involves a lot of physical contact with players on the field, the rate of injuries per a professional soccer game is sometimes a little bit high.
For that reason, some soccer players decide to wear protective equipment like special eyeglasses, mouth guards, and in this case, wrists tape.
While soccer players are not allowed to use their hands to touch the ball, their hands will still be in danger because they’ll use them to push other players during a corner kick, and they will use them whenever they’re falling.
Using your hands while falling is one of the most intuitive reflexes that your mind uses in order to protect the body. Whenever you fall, you immediately try to use your hand to reduce the impact with the ground as much as possible.
Sometimes you can get away with it, but not every time. Whenever you use your hand to land when falling, you’ll apply a lot of force on your wrists and that can introduce you to a lot of wrist injuries that are sometimes extremely painful.
As you can tell, soccer players keep falling on the ground the whole time. Like… ALL THE TIME. They will be relying on their hands and wrists to be able to decrease the impact of their fall. This can put their wrists under extreme danger.
So, wearing anything that can help reduce the chances of injury to the wrists is not a bad idea at all when it comes to playing soccer.
For that reason, soccer players may decide to tape their forearms and wrists in order to gain more strength in their hands and in order to reduce the risks of having a wrist injury while in a match or in a training session.
But, avoiding injuries isn’t the only reason why soccer players tape their wrists. Here’s a list of some other reasons too.
Taping wrists can help with covering jewelry or tattoos.
There are some soccer players that keep wearing bracelets all the time off the field. In order to make sure that they can keep their bracelet on during a soccer match, they might decide to cover it with tape.
Usually in soccer, the referee is allowed to prevent a player from wearing extra things on their body that are not necessary for the game.
With that said, the referee has the full right to prevent a soccer player from keeping their bracelet on during the match if they think that the bracelet is unnecessary and that it might hurt the player or other players on the field.
By wearing a tape on their wrists, soccer players can avoid any arguments with the referees about what they are wearing on their hands.
Also, some soccer players just use tape in order to hide marks on their bodies including tattoos. This isn’t just exclusive for the wrists however. A soccer player might tape any part of their body just to hide a tattoo or a mark that they don’t want the cameras to see.
Some soccer players use tape for luck.
Yes, some soccer players use bandages or tapes for luck. Here’s an article about why Luis Suarez wears tape around his wrist during his soccer matches.
Luis Suarez is one of the top strikers in soccer. He was initially forced to wear tape around his hand in order to recover faster from an injury, and once his hand was cured, he decided to keep wearing the tape because it covers his ribbon of luck.
So long story short, Suarez loved wearing the tape and he decided to keep wearing it after the injury to bring luck.
Taping wrists heals injuries faster
You had to see this one coming. We already mentioned how Luis Suarez was forced to wear tape on his wrist and his hand when he was injured.
Taping your wrist in the proper way can help you recover faster from wrist injuries. The tape makes sure that your hand doesn’t make any wrong movements, and it keeps your hand right where it is supposed to be.
The tape can also protect your wrist from any form of contact with other soccer players on the field. As we said earlier, you’ll use your hand a lot during a soccer match even though you’re not allowed to touch the ball with it.
Thus, taping your hand and your wrist helps soccer players to cure injuries in that area faster.
Taped wrists look cool
I’ll end this article with a very simple claim. Taping your wrist with a colored tape can make your hand look a little bit better, and for that reason, some soccer players decide to tape their wrists.
Soccer players are followed by the cameras everywhere they go on the field during the whole match. Billions of people have watched the soccer world cup competition in 2018. Yes, Billions. I spelled that correctly.
In order to look great in front of billions of people, some soccer players might decide to tape their wrists.
You might not agree but I do believe that taping your wrists with the right colors can make your hands look much better in front of a camera.
I’ll end this article with a small summary of what you have just read.
Soccer players tape their wrists mainly to reduce the risk of wrists injuries. However, there are other reasons behind it too. For example, soccer players might tape their wrists for luck, in order to look better, in order to heal injuries faster, and in order to cover tattoos or ribbons.
Thank you for reading this far and have a nice day / night.