Footballers:Ballerinas

From Arshavin's Q&A on his official site:

From egor2000
Hi Andrey! I play football with friends every week. Could you please recommend to me how to protect the toes, nails in particular, as I always walk around with broken, "black" nails? How do professionals solve this problem, or you don’t have it?
Arshavin: This problem exists. It’s a professional footballers’ problem. It seems to be invisible, but many players suffer from ache in the toes after the games. I think that it depends on the foot structure. I don’t have this problem but some footballers bandage their toes with a plaster.

Just like ballerinas!!! Haha, this just caught my attention because ballerinas have the same problem. I don't really have this problem though, they say my feet are pretty considering that I'm a ballerina. I don't get those black nails, I don't get blisters or wounds on my toes. Though when I was just starting to dance on pointe shoes, I used to bandage my toes too with plaster or micropore tape to avoid those. Then I discovered the wonders of petroleum jelly, I put a bit of it to protect my toes from friction against each other and the very hard toe shoe box. I'm lucky I didn't get those icky things and I can wear my open toed heels/sandals/flipflops whenever I want to :P

I find it awesome and cool to see a lot of similarities between ballers and ballerinas :) the leaps, jumps, graceful running, flexibility, turns, fluidity and movement, sometimes even the kicks on the pitch actually remind me of dancing ballet. To me, it's like we speak the same language through movement :) also, ballerinas have the same athleticism as most athletes. Sure, the workout load and strength may be more intense for the serious athletes, but the way the body is worked out, and the way muscles are used and all that - it's the same. Especially with ballet, most of the work and movement is from the thighs, legs and feet. So yeah, if you saw my legs and thighs, I hate them so much because my muscles are huge. My feet even, they are muscley and the nerves are showy. The good thing about them is that they are powerful enough to knock out people, lol. Sometimes I like to think that I could be a good football player, I just need to work on my aim lol :P

As a popular saying for us ballerinas goes: We are athletes from the waist down, and performers from the waist up.

Man, I miss dancing so much :(