There is a question that is usually repeated every time Lionel Messi wears new boots:Can they really make a soccer player run faster? To do this, we have to go back to 2012. That was the year Messi won his third Ballon d’Or, he became FC Barcelona’s all-time top scorer and the top scorer at European level in a season. But there was also a milestone in another sport.
Kobe Bryant, who managed to be the youngest player to reach 30,000 points, launched his own shoe: the Kobe 8 System. The American shooting guard wanted the shoe to be an extension of his foot. With this in mind they designed a one-millimeter rubber outsole that combines the classic herringbone pattern with a snake scale-inspired traction pattern and uses less rubber than traditional outsoles for lightweight durability and multi-surface traction. That’s precisely what I intended get Messi with his F50 boots, which were an extension of his foot.
No boot alone makes a player the fastest in the world. But it can help part of the energy generated by each muscle reach the grass more efficiently, reduce some unnecessary grams with each step and improve ball control when running at the limit. And so, In a sport where a sprint can decide a match, it is much more important than it seems.
The new Adidas F50 Messi represent precisely that philosophy: a boot designed so that the player barely notices that he is wearing it. One of the aspects that attracts the most attention is its weight. The Messi-specific Elite version barely reaches 199 grams, a figure that was unthinkable just a few decades ago, when many football boots weighed well over 350 grams. From the point of view of biomechanics, the foot is the end of a long lever formed by the entire leg. Every gram removed in that area slightly reduces the moment of inertia during swing, making it easier to accelerate and decelerate the movement thousands of times during a match.
It is not that a footballer is going to run several kilometers per hour faster, but you will spend less energy in each strideto. And after several hundred accelerations over 90 minutes, that small saving can make a difference. Then we have contact with the ball. For decades, specific footwear for soccer players sought to protect the foot, the next step was to become almost a second skin. The latest evolution, however, is the exterior texture.
The version developed for Messi uses a material called HybridTouch, an extremely flexible synthetic surface designed to adapt to the foot and transmit a sensation very similar to direct contact with the ball. A three-dimensional relief appears on it that improves grip during dribbling and hitting even at high speed. It’s a matter of physics: when the ball remains a few thousandths of a second in contact with the surface of the boot, a small increase in friction allows better control of its trajectory without the need to exert more force. It is the same principle that the wheels of a sports car use to maintain grip when cornering.
Most of the innovation, however, is not found where the ball hits, but where almost no one is looking: the sole. The F50 has a technology that Adidas called Sprintframe 360, a lightened internal structure and an external buttress that stabilizes the heel during acceleration. The arrangement of the studs combines elongated and rounded shapes to offer traction when starting, stability during changes of direction and a quick release of the foot at the end of each support. In engineering terms, the goal is to maximize horizontal force without penalizing the ability to turn or the need to brake.
Another obsession of engineers is to prevent the foot moves inside the boot. Every small internal movement means wasted energy and time given up to the other team. To avoid this, a wraparound tongue (known as Burrito Tongue in Messi’s version) and a system that hugs the midfoot to keep the foot firmly supported without generating excessive pressure points. In this model, each relief, each stud and each synthetic fiber responds to hundreds of hours of testing to save fractions of a second, improve contact with the ball or reduce fatigue.
It is true that no separate technology turns Messi into Messi. But the addition of materials such as HybridTouch, the Sprintweb texture, the Sprintframe 360 sole and the work on the fit creates a set where each detail seeks to save a fraction of energy or improve a tenth of a second.