“From Adidas’s point of view, this is our first football super shoe,” the company’s footwear development director Harry Miles told Dezeen. (In this case, football means soccer.)
The goal with the cleats is to give players “a first gear,” Miles went on. “If you look at the trajectory that football boots have had, they all look the same. We didn’t have a great deal of innovation, at least visible and radical innovation. And we wanted to put that into the [F50+].”
Though the shoe marks the first time Adidas’s has featured the foam in anything but a running silhouette, their placement in the F50+ does make sense for soccer players seeking a bump in acceleration on the pitch.
Olympic hopeful Noah Lyles, who calls himself “the fastest man in the world” as the reigning world champion in both the 100 and 200 meters, wears the Adizero Prime SP2. Those shoes feature Lightstrike Pro in a similar geometry and have helped propel Lyles to a personal best of 9.81 in the 100 meters, set in London in July 20, 2024.
