Lightweight Obsession

Over the past couple years weight has "sprinted" its way up the priority list of football boot manufacturers. we have gone from adding an extra ounce of weight to the sole of the boot in order to have a more powerful shot to lightweight insoles because any extra padding might slow you down on the field.

the hole idea of an ultralight football boot emerged with the introduction of concept boots by Nike (Mercurial SL) and Puma (V1.815). Since then the world of football boots has developed an extreme case of anorexia, where nothing will ever be light enough.

This obsession picked up in 2010 with the revolutionary (and advertisement packed) launch of the adizero, the boot that changed the meaning of F50 from ultimate personalization to lightweight performance.

The adizero were a massive hit during the WC, and puma followed and topped adidas' extraordinary achievement with their own take at the world's lightest boot: the V1.10 SL.

and so the race began, holding the title of "lightest boot" has become as much of an obsession for all manufacturers as it is for Roman Abramovich to win the UCL.

As a result adidas has now modified all their line-outs to meet the lightweight requirements and even went a step further to create an SL version of their already "superlight" boots, resulting in players all over the world having to pay more money for less boot (just think about how many of the pro's actually wear SL versions of adidas' boots).

Adidas are not the only example of this, as Nike also created their Elite series that failed miserably because of their outrageous prices.

All kinds of brands are being sucked into the lightweight obsession, as an example Pele Sports currently holds the crown of lightest boo in the world with the Trinity 3E

Now don't get me wrong, the hole idea of an ultralight football boot doesn't bother me at all, in fact I prefer to wear minimalist boots that have as little extra material as possible. The problem comes when we take the concept out of proportion and start replacing all the traditional heritage boots with their "SL" counterpart. Puma with the king SL, Mizuno with the Morelia neo, and to top it all off Adidas with the adi-not-so-pure 11pro and the upcoming meteor that is the LZ, that will mark the end of the real Predator that we all know and love.

The idea behind lightweight shoes is that if your legs have less weight to carry you don't get as tired and will sprint faster for longer periods of time. In my opinion if you sacrifice comfort and support for lightweight your feet have to do all the work to keep you stable which in some cases could mean more energy being used on stabilization and less on sprinting. At the end of the day if it is true that every gram is going to drag you back then you shouldn't wear shin-pads, or socks, or even a shirt because all that added weight will slow you down.`

The bottom line is, if you are fast, you are fast no matter what shoes you wear (as an example Messi terrorized defenders in La Liga wearing Tiempos before the idea of a sub-7 ounce shoe crossed anybody's mind) and if you are not a pair of "SL" boots wont make you catch up with Usain Bolt in a 100m sprint.