#1274: AirPads

Given the enormous cost of buying soccer players and their hypersensitivity to injury, I’m surprised to find nothing like today’s invention in the patent databases (although there are 750,000 applications still waiting to be examined at USPTO, so it may already have been applied for).

Shin pads with automobile-like airbags which inflate explosively on impact.

It’s true that these would occasionally inflate when the ball was miskicked and they might cause opposing players’ legs to spring apart violently on impact, but since everyone would be wearing these, and the amplitude of inflation would be small, the protection would be shared.

Once one’s pads had fired, they would be quickly replaced from the sidelines with a new pair.