I need a new shoe company

Nike and I are sort of in an unhealthy relationship right now. I keep buying their shoes. They keep disappointing me. I keep buying more of their shoes anyway.

I can't totally blame Nike here. I'm clearly the codependent one since I'm responsible for 2 of the 3 steps in our vicious cycle, but I am still pretty unhappy about the whole bit.

My whole rant of the moment with them has to do with these shoes, the Nike Men's Air Max Total 365.



These shoes are sold as a cross between soccer shoes and training shoes. So they'd be ideal for someone like me who likes to kick the ball around with the aspiring Pele's in my house and then pretend like I'm going to go and run after that. Sounds like a great idea, combining the best parts of two types of shoes to build an uber-shoe that you would never have to change out, because it is perfect for EVERYTHING! Unfortunately, these shoes turned out more like when Daimler (a company renowned for quality craftsmanship with little innovation) bought Chrysler (a company who developed fantastic ideas and then built them poorly) and they started building boring cars crappily.

This shoe set out to do two things and failed miserably at both:

• Soccer shoes - These shoes have an awful touch. They are all slick, so the ball slides off of them. They have a really pointy toe, and really tall soles so you can't get off a clean kick. They are even rounded all the way around, which is sort of a no-no for soccer shoes.


• Training shoes - These shoes are really, really uncomfortable. The air cushions are too stiff. The toebox would be too small for a four year old. They just aren't comfortable.

This was actually the second pair of Nike soccer shoes I got. The first pair (Nike Air Tiempo IC's)literally fell apart. When I sent them in to be looked at, because I had only worn them about 15 times and I didn't think the sole should spontaneously fall off, I was told they were made too long ago and they couldn't help me. When I wrote in to say that they really missed the mark on these soccer trainers, I was told I should have bought EITHER soccer shoes OR trainers. Grrrr.

In any event, these were obviously a bad buy on my part (fortunately, due to my charitable leanings I was able to find them a good home). Now what I need to do is find a comfortable pair of trainers that will give me a decent touch on the ball and isn't really narrow. If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. In the meantime I need to give them puppies an MLT.

And I'd love to find them in a non-Nike pair if possible. It's time to get out of this relationship.