Our resident boot nerd dives into some pieces of the adidas boot world, as we give those at home a little bit of reading to chew up their quarantine time.

The man behind it all. Ben Herath, who led the charge in re-igniting the Predator spirit, wanted to maintain the DNA of the old, whilst re-inventing the boot with the new. "We took the Predator 18 as a starting point and we thought about how we could infuse it with real DNA from the Predator. It was a question of how do we bring more of that personality, performance, innovation, and spirit of the Predator into the new design”.

Ben Herath - VP of Design at adidas

Primeknit would always be a front runner for the base upper material. It is highly commercially viable for adidas to use this on the Predator, as it is not only cost effective to produce, but also reaps bountiful benefits for the player. Flexible, malleable, strong, and comfortable.

“...we felt that the Primeknit material that we created on the 18 was a great starting point for the design, but for us it was all about the haptics, all about the texture, the grip, thinking about what we could do in combination with that Primeknit. Primeknit is soft, its pliant, it’s flexible, adaptable, but then how do we add grip to that while also not detracting from the Primeknit offers.”

The marketing material from adidas exclaimed ‘IT’S BACK’ when re-launching the Predator in 2018. Back then that didn’t quite fit. It took a couple years, and now it fits like a glove.

This comfort also coincides with how the leather offers a close fit, as it’s able to mould to the shape of the foot. As it’s a naturally occurring material, you’re able to break down it down to a microscopic level, and literally change the structure of it - hence why we call it ‘breaking it in’. This allows for it to shape to your foot, offering you the fit only a leather boot could ever offer.

Adidas’ Copa 20+ is the current pinnacle of leather football boot innovation. Mixing super soft k-leather with a laceless construction offers an incredible playing experience, further solidifying leathers spot in the game. The FusionSkin construction works brilliantly in providing lockdown in it’s laceless nature, but also in creating a uniform transition from synthetic to leather.

The touch on the ball? Surreal. Leather always provides a forgiving and natural feel on the ball. Synthetics are great for a thin and barefoot sensation on the ball. But there will always be that level of class you feel when receiving, passing, dribbling, and hitting that hollywood pass into space to your no.9.

Something has us way more keen to see what adidas do with the Copa 21 series, than what they’ll do with the other silos. How they’ll one-up on the Copa 20+ is one big task, but you can trust adidas to continue innovating the game with the new, whilst still maintaining the DNA of the past.