Football, football, soccer, calcio... call the most popular game in the world what you want, but some things were common to all of them: the athletes who earned their living by kicking the ball often, indeed, had creative hairstyles, if you can call it that, and football boots were equal - black. That's it.
Over the years, football has gone through various fads, many of which should remain buried deep in the past.
Older fans remember the super short shorts that seemed more like props for the beach than for active sports, younger fans used to tight jerseys can't believe that the once popular were inflated, as if stolen from their older brother, jerseys. On the other hand, football boots, be they ankle boots, with metal tops, fixed or replaceable cleats, Adidas, Hummel, Puma, Gola, Valsport... were almost always black.
The first models, converted from workers' shoes, with nailed-on wedges and for which "we needed an armed list" were brown, but certainly the first kittens were "thrown into the river". If this year's World Cup in Brazil showed us anything, it's that black football boots are only worn by football referees and probably hipsters, but certainly no one takes them seriously.
A lost battle
The classic black leather, perhaps with some line or logo splashed on it, lost the battle to the synthetic multi-colored boots. And "variegated" is a mild word. Sports companies use color names to describe their boots that even a good number of women have never heard of.
To male fans, accustomed to the basic palette of colors, the names earth-green, solar slime, prism purple, metallic-purple and others sound like something from sci-fi movies. As the "main culprit" for the popularization of colorful soccer cleats, many consider the Italian make-up artist Marco Simone, who played in white soccer cleats in the final of the European Cup in 1995 for his Milan team against Ajax.
In addition to the white ones, you could occasionally meet some red football boots on the pitches. However, the Milan striker is not the first to go against tradition.
In an attempt to break into the British market, the German company Hummel paid Everton's Alan Ball to wear white boots in the early seventies, which were not well received. The reason why we had to wait until the middle of the nineties of the last century to start "painting" football boots lies in the materials. The main material for the boots was kangaroo leather, which was difficult to dye so as not to damage the integrity of the material.
Manufacturers would add a detail here and there, a specially colored piece of leather to "break up the black", but the boots were still basically black.
Synthetic materials
To the joy of the kangaroos, former Australian football player Craig Johnston designed the now legendary Predator football boots for Adidas in the late 80s, which, in addition to leather, also had synthetic components intended for better control of the ball when shooting. With the introduction of synthetics in the production of football boots, the door is wide open for colors that we can't even see in the rainbow.
One of those were the blue and silver Nike Mercurial football boots worn by the Brazilian forward Ronaldo, who was named the best player of the championship, at the 1998 World Cup in France.
In addition to synthetic materials and a wide range of colors, the XNUMXs also brought a revolutionary detail on football boots: the round cleats were replaced by cleats in the form of small blades, which improved the stability and traction of the football boots.
From the nineties until the World Cup in Brazil, Adidas, Nike, Puma and others tried in every possible way to draw attention to the models worn by their athletes, so that pink, gold, striped, bright yellow... football boots took precedence on the fields.
Puma went a step further, so their football players wear boots in different colors - the right one is painted in light blue, and the left one is pink. It is precisely because of all this explosion of colors that the question arises whether colorful football boots give an advantage in duels, that is, whether intense colors distract attention and create confusion for defenders. The former striker of the Serbian national team, Marko Pantelić, shook the opponents' nets all over Europe, and as he says, "he always wore white football boots".
However, he believes that it doesn't matter what color the football boots are.
"You're either a master or you're not"
"You're either a master or you're not. Either you know how to play, or you don't," Pantelić said. "If you know how to play, the color of the boots doesn't make any difference." He notes that choosing different colored boots is a matter of marketing. "If the company is doing well, then there is justification for such a move." As a midfield player, Željezničar's Muamer Svraka regularly engages in duels with opposing players, both in defense and attack. "For me personally, football boots of various colors do not distract attention.
Maybe they bother someone, but I absolutely don't mind what color they are," said Svraka. On the other hand, for the "on-call culprits" for the defeats of their beloved teams and national selections, soccer referees, football boots in vivid colors create an additional problem during the trial.
Referee problems
"Colorful football boots on the field certainly make it difficult for the referees to judge.
This especially applies to assistant referees, where sometimes even centimeters decide whether or not it is a backfield. "In any case, it's not easy when two players with four different colors of boots go to the ball," said Croatian referee Miroslav Vitković.
"All this certainly made the decision difficult for the chief judge, but not to that extent. The worst is with some, the so-called pinball situations, as we call them, when you don't know whose ball it is. However, it is most difficult for the assistant referees in the offside position". For nostalgic and more conservative fans, there remains the hope that sports equipment manufacturers will get saturated with bright colors, and return retro black football boots to the fields.
The giants Adidas and Puma emerged from the conflict between the Dassler brothers
One of the most significant events in the history of boot production took place in 1924, when the brothers Adolf and Rudolf founded the Gebruder Dassler Schuhfabrik, i.e. Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory, in Germany.
At the beginning of the 40s, there was a quarrel between the brothers, so Adolf Adi Dassler kept the original factory, which he renamed Adidas, while Rudolf moved to the other side of the river, where he founded the PUMA company in 1948. Although Adidas boasts that they are the creators of the first interchangeable cleats, Rudolf Dassler disputed that claim, saying that he and Puma were responsible for the revolutionary design. Today, Adidas and Puma, along with American Nike, dominate the football boot market.
Copa Mundial best selling football boots ever
In 1979, in preparation for the 1982 World Cup in Spain, Adidas produced a boot called the Copa Mundial. Since then, the boot has gone through little changes, and since 2001 it has been the best-selling boot of all time.
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