Nike Thread [17] - All Nike, pictures, info, questions here!

Most midsoles on classically constructed boots or shoes with no padding fillers have a cardboard like midsole of varying degrees of thickness that acts as a buffer between the outsole's underside and the insole overlay. If I recall correctly, the claim to fame of the Lazzarini made boots -both past and the two present companies- is that the midsole is actually made from leather and not a synthetic material, which offers more flex with the movement if the outsole and your foot. Pantofola might have stopped this as they are more commercial driven than when I first encountered them in 2003, but Akuna still does this on their better models per their website description. There are newer lasting boards like the ones in the split outsoles I mentioned or plastic/carbon or glass fiber, but the best ones IMO for foot function are the most minimal like the cardboard-ish kind. Even the Morelia has something similar to this in there, I believe -I am at my surgeons office on my iPad or I would check for sure.

I think the extra that you are paying for a Pantofola is partly for the craftsman ship of a handmade good. Just like the world of fine dress shoes, for a comparison that I have drawn from in the past. There is also the inflation of price from PDS, which is a bit absurd, IMO...but, I would rather pay $200.00 for a handmade boot with one piece of leather in all black than a neon green cut out of toxic synthetic. PDS also has some nice sales on stuff like the Dream with the neon stitching. Personally I wouldn't do some of the more funky colors that Pantofola does and I hope they don't go to far with those and lose credibility or business because the world needs as many handmade boot makers as possible to combat the mass produced plastic that has flooded us out. It is only getting worse with this new "green" trend in boots, but I have a rant exclusively for that fallacy at a later date.

The site I linked with the translation should ship world wide, and Akuna's site might as well. Here is a site in the UK, I can't fully vouch for them though and they don't have the Colibri http://www.soccerkits.com/1911-Cinquestelle-Football-Boots-c116/. eBay on worldwide search turns up some Akuna as well, you just have to be creative with the search tems and put various combos of Akuna, Cinquestelle, and Pantofola D'Oro.

 

One of the best analogies I have seen in relation to boots; sadly most people don't see the boots as a tool of their trade that helps them more effectively perform a feat that their skills -honed through years of training- are responsible for. People see the boot as the causation or prevention of said skills/talents/attributes being performed. Hence all these posts on here (though we have reduced it) and comments from the banal idiocy that comprises 99.9% of SoccerBible's comments saying "those boots look slow" or "mi mercurialzzzzzz macake me fazzt, m8...holla at my boi, cr7. nike 4 lif". Or my favorites like "I play X position, I need a control boot, but I play X position too, so I need a speed boot...ps Copas suck" or the all time gem "those boots made me slow".....Yeah, it wasn't your slowness that made you slow. I am sure Mr. Bolt was concerned about your rise though the ranks of the sprinting world until you decided to play football and handicapped yourself with "slow" boots. Morons.

I do think that the world is starting hit a bad point though for selection of tools for the craft as future generations of players continue to be produced. When operating from a starting point of derangement, you will not know any better and something functioning as normal will be abnormal to you. That is where we are now with boot materials, and construction. The market has been deranged and everyone is starting from a point of becoming adjusted to total crap as top of the line items. Thus you have people convinced that blistering your foot to the point of bleeding after months of wear -with a proper fitting boot- or product failure after 10 uses is not only acceptable, it is the standard and expectations then fall in line and people learn to play in garbage without knowing better. Sadly that turns into preferring garbage as oppose to quality. I will always say you play better when you are comfortable in/with your shoes, but I will never understand how people get so bent by marketing that they think some of these shoes are comfortable when they feel like you are playing barefoot on broken glass in them.

Players like Messi, Ronaldo, and Falcao could play better than 99.9% of us in construction boots, then they put their name behind products that suck, and then don't even wear what they are selling in most cases. Yet we still buy the items, and defend them when we realize they suck. I am not really sure what is worse, the endorsement for failing products knowing you don't use them, or the our staunch belief in the products despite tons of evidence to prove they suck or they are not actually being used by our heroes.

 

Different brushes, hahaha.