The Evolution of Soccer Cleats

The culture of soccer cleats has greatly changed over the years. Today, there are thousands of styles and colors, and newly developed technology that improves playing. Soccer cleat consumers are an easy target to marketers because they believe that they need to have the best made, most stylish, and usually the most expensive cleats to portray how good they are at soccer. In the soccer world it’s all about the brand, meaning that the cleats you wear distinguish what kind of player you are. The two predominant brands in soccer are Adidas and Nike. Adidas is the force responsible for revolutionizing soccer cleats. The first modern soccer cleats were created and designed by Adolf Dassler, an employee of Adidas, in the 1950s. Both Adidas and Nike have managed to evolve the soccer cleat from a heavy generic shoe to a lightweight shoe that incorporates even the most recent technology.

 

Marketers of big companies, such as Nike and Adidas, use arch rivals like Messi who plays for FC Barcelona and Ronaldo who plays for Real Madrid as competition for selling their products. Also, the fact that Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo are arguably the two best players in the world right now, makes the products being advertised by them extremely popular amongst consumers.  

    

In our consumer culture today, people are satisfied with buying an item such as soccer cleats, based on how pretty they are or how the world will view them wearing the cleats. Many argue that it’s not the shoe that makes the player, but it’s the player that makes the shoe. However, consumers of soccer cleats are obsessed with the stereotypes associated with buying and eventually wearing them.