Last summer, not long after Lionel Messi became a team-mate of his at Inter Miami, DeAndre Yedlin was idly scrolling through his Instagram. Among the content served up that day by the algorithm was an intriguing-looking football boot.
“I think it was a special green one for William Troost-Ekong from Nigeria. I saw that and thought it was just cool looking, so I clicked on it and started seeing how sustainable the boot was, how it used recycled materials and all of that sort of thing.”
The boots were by Sokito, a new brand founded by Jake Hardy a football fan who had been disappointed by the beautiful game's lack of focus around sustainability. While on holiday in Vietnam, Hardy met a tour guide called Kito who took him to a market where he saw people making shoes from leather offcuts.
Hiking with my grandfather
This was the Eureka moment. Searching for a name that linked to the inception of the brand he combined Kito with Soccer and ‘Sokito’ was born.
Not only did the boot Yedlin was looking at on social media look good, it was the first to be made entirely from bio-based materials. “I'm a big fan of nature,” explains Yedlin, speaking to FourFourTwo from his home in Cincinnati where he’s been since making the surprise transfer from Miami on the eve of the 2024 MLS season. “I was hiking with my grandfather from like the age of two pretty much every weekend so nature's a huge part of my life. I'm not perfect, but whatever steps I can take to help nature thrive, I'm going to take.”
The defender immediately contacted his marketing agent, Joanna, and asked if she could make enquiries about Yedlin becoming involved with Sokito. But he didn’t just want to try the boot, he wanted to invest in the whole brand.
“Sokito fits exactly with my values. At this stage of my career [Yedlin is 31] it's not like people are throwing crazy numbers at me and I need to wear their brands, I'm at the point where I'm starting to think a little bit more about what I represent and not only that, what represents me.
“One of the things my investment advisor told me is before you make any investment, make sure it's something that you truly believe in. Forget the financial part. So we contacted Sokito, they came back and we were surprised to hear that they had a pretty good amount of players and a lot of them were investors, which was another plus for me because now you have a sustainable boot brand that looks great and seems to be player-led.”
After trying the boots and formalising the investment, Yedlin was put into a WhatsApp group with other players like Ashley Westwood and Troost-Ekong. Before any big changes are made to the boots colourway or silhouettes, players are consulted and encouraged to give feedback.
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“You don't get that at other brands. It really makes players feel involved in the process, which I think is incredibly important. At the end of the day, we're the ones wearing the shoe, we're the ones being seen in it, we're the ones marketing it. I thought that was a really cool approach.”
The brands USP is that it is the first to be certified vegan by The Vegan Society. The boot contains corn waste, castor beans, wood fibres, sugarcane, bamboo, in fact 42 per cent of the materials in the latest release, the Scudetta, are bio-based, with ambitions to hit 100 per cent in the future. Recycled plastic bottles form a lot of the remaining 58 per cent of materials.
Yedlin himself turned vegan after watching The Game Changers, a Netfix documentary about athletes who follow plant-based diets. He not only noticed an improvement in his performance, but also every day life. “I felt I had more energy and just felt lighter on my feet. You feel a little bit more refreshed, less drowsy and less… ‘blah’”.
So, are Sokito’s vegan boots actually any good?
Now, not only is Yedlin’s diet vegan, his football boots are too, but how do they stack up among the options available to professional footballers in 2024-25?
“Taking all the bias out of it – I know I'm invested in it – but genuinely, it's the most comfortable boot I've ever worn. It's incredible how soft it is. I was talking about this yesterday with some of my teammates, the heel doesn't have that super hard feel you sometimes get with a lot of heels that give blisters and all of that. I like how simple it is also. It looks good. They've designed a really good-looking cleat.”
FourFourTwo couldn’t just take one of the investor’s word for it though, so our resident boot tester, Lolade Jinadu took a pair of Scudetta’s for a spin. You can read the full in-depth review here, but Jinadu described the boot as “groundbreaking” and noted that Sokito have: “shown the world it is possible to build a boot using these materials without compromising on performance”.
As Yedlin points out, football boots are a player's main tool. “it was really important to me to be able to invest in this brand and be a part of it and help make a difference, but then obviously have a tool that I feel really comfortable in and that's helping to change the world.”
Change the world might sound like hyperbole, but judging the level Sokito has managed to find in a pro-level boot with vegan certification, could this be the football boot industry’s electric car moment?
