AEven though I haven’t played football for a long time, I’m toying with the idea of buying some awesome football boots. They just represent something. And maybe you can wear them on other occasions too. In any case, it couldn’t look more stupid than a Speed 2.0 in fluorescent squeaky yellow from Balenciaga. And it’s a big deal in the sneaker market, at 795 euros it’s not exactly cheap, but it’s still a bargain in the land of sports shoe fetishists.
A pair of the “Moon Shoes”, for example, cobbled together by Nike in a very small edition in 1972, went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in 2019 for $437,500. It is now in the display case of a Canadian collector. Maybe he runs a lap with it sometimes. Or he sometimes wears them at the opera, no one knows for sure. People who buy $437,500 athletic shoes are inherently difficult to assess behaviorally.
Well, in any case, modern soccer shoes are no less flashy than the Moon Shoes, but still significantly cheaper. What the likeable company Nike and their frontman Cristiano Ronaldo wanted to sell us for the World Cup in Qatar can now be purchased online for a mere 217.46 euros thanks to a price reduction of 25 percent. I’m flirting with that.
You have to come to that first
Even the name makes a difference. Imagine me wearing these shoes and to the clueless friend who asks what is that, I reply with a superior smile, This is a pair of Nike Air Zoom Mercurial Superfly IX Elite CR7 FG White Blue Gold F182. The friend will hardly be able to top Ronaldo’s signature model if he doesn’t come along in moon shoes.
Even then, my Air Zoom Mercurial Superfly IX Elite CR7 FG White Blue Gold F182 would be visually superior to his footwear. As any connoisseur will immediately notice, their design is inspired by Portugal’s famous tiles, the azulejos. A bit of homeland flair for Ronaldo, a little national reminiscence, a great idea from the design studio, you have to come up with it first.
Now Ronaldo is now playing football in Saudi Arabia, maybe that’s why his tile shoes are on sale. Maybe they are yesterday’s shoes. Maybe the design should be revised. Something typical of the country from the new home Saudi Arabia maybe. Stylized execution scenes, for example. Wouldn’t appeal to me personally now.
I could still switch to a sister model though: the Nike Air Zoom Mercurial Superfly Elite 9 FG Mbappé Personal Edition in beetroot, university blue, vivid purple, metallic gold. That’s probably what it will come down to.