From Prototype to the Pitch: How We Created a Football ‘Supershoe’
The F50+ is built for speed. Find out how the team took inspiration from track spike shoes to create one of our most innovative football boots to date.
Innovation at adidas means delivering only the best for the athlete, at speed. It is a legacy that began with our founder, Adi Dassler, exemplified most famously during the events of July 4, 1954, at the World Cup Final and the famous ‘Wunder von Bern’ (the Miracle in Bern). With rain hammering down, the Germans, equipped with innovative exchangeable screw-in studs for their lightweight football boots, took on the unbeatable Hungarians, and won. Those revolutionary boots, designed by Adi himself, would change the dynamics of the game that fateful day.
In 2004, to commemorate the 50 years since the famous match in Bern, we launched a new boot onto the market that embodied the same game-changing spirit of Adi’s 1954 innovation. The F50. F for fast, 50 for the anniversary. In the last 20 years, F50 has featured in some of the football’s most exhilarating moments, on the feet of its most legendary players, including in Argentina’s most recent win in the Copa America 2024.
F50 (2004). The first ever F50 that adidas brought to market.
F50 adiZero (2010). Customized for Lionel Messi for the FIFA World Cup 2010.
F50 (2014). Leading up to the FIFA World Cup 2014, adidas dropped the F50 Samba Pack. It featured a Hybridtouch and SpeedFoil upper with a SprintFrame outsole, making it extremely lightweight and comfortable.
Taking Fast to the next level
But we didn’t stop there. We decided it was time to take the F50 one step further in its innovation journey and create a shoe with the same game-changing potential as Adi Dassler’s 1954 creation, the first adidas football ‘Supershoe’. Developed in our Innovation Lab, the F50+ is unlike anything we’ve built before, a new construction designed for players looking to experience speed like never before.
This is the story of how the F50+ was born.
The journey to the F50+ began in 2021 with a request from Sam Handy, currently SVP Product & Design. He challenged the Innovation team to create a shoe that makes a player faster and – to achieve that – conceptually overcome the traditional guardrails of how a football shoe is created and…looks.
From that kick-off moment, we were given three months to come back to leadership with a proof of concept.
Just like the concept for the F50+ we had to be incredibly fast, but at the same time extremely precise.
Our mission was to create a mechanism that would amplify human sprint biomechanics, and we would get there through a number of rapid make-test-learn cycles.
The construction
Taking inspiration from the work that had already been done with elite track spikes, we came up with the idea to use a stiff spike-plate in combination with low density high resilience foam and adapt it for the football pitch.
The final construction of the F50+ features two foam pods and two stiff plates providing four material and surface choices to engineer, helping players sprint faster. Previously, the shoes had just one plate material option, now we have three additional levers to pull to influence performance.
The ‘Lightstrike Pro’ foam inserts provide explosiveness during sprints, while the ‘Sprintframe 360+’ combines a foam-infused structure with an iconic heel counter for explosive movement in any direction.
From prototype to the pitch
The process from prototype to the feet of pro footballers was by no means an easy journey. The radical construction of the F50+ meant that we had a lot of work to do to ensure that the boot still passed our high standards for quality and safety. Beyond the technical difficulties, we also faced challenges to convince stakeholders that this innovation was worth the risk. We needed to prove that this new shoe, with its different look and performance priorities, deserved to be on the market and on pro players' feet.
Professional players usually expect their boots to deliver three key things – a snug fit, lightweight construction, and a close-to-ground sensation. How would we be able to merge the radical plate featured in the construction of the F50+ with an upper? What about the foam inserts? Surely, the construction must add a ton of weight! And how could we plan to make the forefoot stance feel organic and football-natural to players? We saw these hurdles from day one and knew we would have to overcome them sooner or later.
A first mock-up demonstrator from the project kick-off workshop.
The first functional prototype of the F50+ we tested internally on players for foam pod positioning. You can see the early iteration of foam inserts which look drastically different from other boots on the market.
Version 1.2 of the F50+. Here you can see the more aggressive evolution of the foam inserts that we successfully validated in sprint trials.
The first functional print of the F50+ double plate outsole that we used for pro player testing.
A later iteration of the F50+ that’s close to the final version. We used these boots for performance validation with university partners as well as pro players.
The finished F50+. Ready to be worn by players on the pitch.
So, before we started testing with pro players, we had to ensure we had a viable prototype.
To do this, we used 3D motion analysis, force plates & high-speed cameras on the football pitch in our lab to capture footage, including images of a player accelerating to a sprint, with the camera focused on the boot. This gave us not only a great visual perspective but, with the use of 3D Motion Capture, we could also overlay the forces with the video of the sprint to check whether the foam inserts were placed correctly within the outsole and also let us see if the studs engaged correctly with the ground.
This testing was all done using the first version prototype. During the testing we were able to use the data to create a second mockup with optimizations on the very same day. Using the learning from our initial testing we were able to create version 1.2 and begin testing with our pro players and university partners.
Only the best for the athlete
To ensure that the shoe worked best for our athletes and their on-pitch needs, we set up testing and feedback sessions with players and University partners. The goal of testing is always to ensure that the product we’re developing really benefits our athletes. There is no sense innovating simply for the sake of innovation; we need to make sure the final product provides the player with an advantage, whether it is greater ball control or in this case, speed.
Within a very short period of time, we went through multiple iteration cycles that went from extremely aggressive (aimed at validating that the concept achieved our initial ambitions) to market-readiness (aimed at testing the durability of the product and what players require before they wear the product).
A shoe like this doesn’t just appear in stores or on the feet of professional players; it is always a journey that involves many different teams and individuals determined to embrace Adi Dassler’s legacy to pursue innovation that truly makes a difference on match day.
With the F50+ we see true game-changing potential, as we look to the upcoming season, we’ll be watching closely to witness how our latest innovation shapes footballing history.
Perhaps it’s time for the next miracle?
Want more insider insights on the F50+?
Head over to Dezeen to read more.
