This thread is inspired by a little conversation I have been having with Becks7 and Vino Gino about players and their footwear. While I am sure some of you have noticed and some have not, the boots a lot of the top level pro's are wearing are not what they are selling in ad's across the globe. One of the biggest "rip-off" artist's here is adidas who markets the Mania as the " most worn boot at the pro level" which is true to some extent but many of their top stars are wearing the boot that only looks like the mania with leather in place of the predator islands, these players include but are not limited to Raul, Zidane, J. Zannati (Inter), Herrio (before going with the SuperNova),and many others, feel free to add if you see this as well Now Nike is not as bad but Figo's TT90 ll's are a bit diffrent as they have a tounge and and extended fold over as well, quite a few of the TT 90 ll players have the basic screw in bottom that is on the Tiempo series and I hear part of the reason for the release of K-leather Vapors and TT90 ll's was because many pro's don't wear the Nike Skin and KNG-100 models and request regular leather so Nike just said screw it and made them ready for the public. Diadora also has been doing this with Vieri the shoes he was wearing the past two years have just been Brasils that were painted black and blue to look like the Uragano and grey and green to look like Unica's I realize most of you may not care but I wanted to put this out there because so may people get sucked in to the gimmick of boots making you a better player and while I will never agrue aganist the fit and feel being perfect and that helping I will say people who think rubber vamps and touch control coating seem to have been taken for a ride by the said companies. BTW I like wear the Total 90 KNG-100 model as well as the Tiempo Premier, I do perfer the tt 90 a bit more because its more water proof and the last shape fits me better than the tiempo right out of the box but I don't think the control coating makes a bit of difference. Let BS know if you you feel a little ripped off by all of this and point out anyof this type of stuff if you have seen it too.
Another thing I'd like to mention is...like some Nike boots... A lot of pro's have "6-stud Copa's". They take a Copa Mundial boot, and then cut off the studs where the 6-studs would be on the adidas World Cup's. Then they simple put a stud insert in, and there ya go, a mixed sole boot (A-Line/Joma or Kelme I think) I don't read a lot of footy mags, so i'm interested about Viera's boots.
a lot of pros (any sport) get customization on their equipment (boots, shoes, tennis racquets, whatever...). there are a lot of "paint jobs" to depict a certain image of a product that a pro will wear/use, nothing really new imo.
I think in basketball, the shoes they wear are quite close to what's available to the consumer. But there's a lot of customization etc ... However, for those who follow basketball, when Rasheed Wallace wore Air Force 1's (a technolgically "old" shoe), he had a double/triple stack of Zoom Air (imagine the air pocket seen in the Total 90 insole stack 2/3 times but built into the shoe) to cater to his needs.
Yeah thats kind of why I started this thread to call the companies and players on their "Bull$hit", I have noticed this in other sports as well and in soccer for years. I just thought with the current trend towards 'hi-tech' boots like the vapor, mania, and so on that it would be kinda fun to expose the players and companies who promote them as innovative and game changing for what they are. Another trick people pull is called "spatting" and it is where you remove the logo's from a cleat and replce them with another companies. This is not as comon as it once was with the ability to custom make lasts to players feet, and countries not forcing players to wear the logo of their national team sponser on their feet as well (Germany beign the only notable exception I can think of) while playing international matches. An example of this would be taking a pair of Tiempo Permiers and removing the Nike badging and things that clearly mark the boot as a Nike product and then replacing the missing logos with a set of Adidas stripes and maybe even a Copa tounge to make them apper to be Copa Mundials.
I think this is the worse example of all. The Brasil is nothing like the Uragano. I remember Eurosport doing a two page add on the Uragano in one of their catalogs. It was basically implying: Vieri wears them so they must be good. We really needed a tread like this to expose this.
I know the one you are talking about and if you look close you can see they are just Brasils with painted blue color on them. I think he will be wearing the Attiva this fall and if that is the case the boot they are selling to us is the one they are giving to the pros, Diadora went the crappy route for about 2 years with the shoes they made other than the Brasil and now thay are starting to get back to making good boots again
I know a few guys around the MLS and they tell me that it's hard for them to get the same footwear as the Europeans. I saw one pair of Predators from a guy on the Crew who got them from a European based player. Basically, the shoes are massively lighter, have thinner leather and fewer gimmicks, and are custom fitted. Doubt if any of you are ski racers, but it's the same deal. The top athletes wear custom boots that are far more ideal for the sport than the shelf crap - and never make it to retail stores. These athletes go to the factories and walk away with boots you'll never see anywhere in stores. Sometimes it's a perfect match, sometimes it's just good to pamper a top athlete (from a company's perspective). Good thread.
The custom fitting is done through a program called MI ADIDAS where they have you walk around in this electronic box for like 20 mins and get readings on your foot strike, foot shape, size and all that stuff then they make the boots to fit everything about your feet down to the letter they have a MI ADIDAS program here in the states but it's only for running shoes as of right now. I fully agree about the taking care of your athlete though if they are a top name in the sport since their face is the image of your company such as Becks and Vieri and other big stars. I know a few guys around the MLS as well but they have Nike contracts and they wear the vapors so there isn't too much they can do to make that shoe less gimmicked and lighter. Just curious though did the european pred's have a leather vamp or was it rubber and the heel counter, was that really on the shoe or was that bogus as well?
it should have been the same as what we have available in north america. Heel counter isn't a gimmick but the predator (rubber) vamp is somewhat of a gimmick.
The shoe i was refering to was a pair a European Pro had given to some one, the basic mass market pred's will be the same across the pond though. I have seen "Mania" on pro's with a heel counter like the manics and mania turf with just red rubber on the back giving the image of the external heel counter
Sorry to get off topic but this is also done with keeper gloves, too. Anyone see Keller's gloves https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=60183