Eccentric and brightly coloured football boots may have become the norm, but one brand more than any other uses it's boots as a blank canvas to showcase some pretty radical designs! Championing their speed range, PUMA have gained a reputation for going against convention and giving their designers full artistic licence!
The PUMA speed range has been responsible for some of the most eye-catching footwear to ever grace a football pitch, so we rounded up a selection of our favourites to remind the boots community of football boot artistry at it's best...
If your choice of football boots is about making a statement on the pitch and being a reflection of the wearer, then we think PUMA can pretty much cater for all tastes! From unique collaborations to special commemorative boots, no other range could boast such an eclectic mix which even trumps the headline making Mercurial Vapor.
At SoccerBible HQ we are in the fortunate position of having a veritable cornucopia of football boots, so it was no easy task whittling down our collection of eccentric PUMA speed boots to just a few for our photographers. But we've highlighted some of our favourites, which had to start with the unseen green PUMA v1.06 with the famous grass pitch effect.
The impressive Unseen Green colourway made it's debut in the 2006 World Cup in Germany. On pitch, their camouflage styling actually made them stand out, thanks to the crisp white Puma form-stripe running down the outstep.
A very bright coming together of colours in 2008, 'The Bull' was appropriately named due to a more than uncanny resemblance to the energy drink Red Bull. Although it's colours might have been more fitting of a Superman-esque name, but with both having connotations of speed, PUMA were onto a win-win situation.
With a design inspired by Usain Bolt, the v1.10 SL Lightning featured Bolt's signature Jamaica colours of yellow and green. And as PUMA had the world's fastest man on their books, they went a little bit further with design and added Swarovski crystals embedded in the heel, and Jamaica's national motto presented on the out-step: "Out of Many, One People".
In 2011, we weren't quite sure of the main reasoning behind these Kanji versions, and just felt perhaps the PUMA designers were seeing how far they could push eccentricity! The tangible link though, is "Kanji" are actually traditional Chinese characters used in modern Japanese writing, hence the scriptures adorning the boot, and the symbols on the toe mean 'speed'.
With 2012 being the year of the Olympics and the release of the film 'Marley', PUMA teamed up with Bob Marley's daughter and fashion designer Cedella Marley to mastermind a Jamaican themed evoSPEED. After designing the 2012 Olympic uniforms for the Jamaican team, Cedella - Bob's eldest daughter – gave PUMA's speed boot some reggae flavour.
The PUMA camo football boots were a prototype/concept boot, which was actually released in limited numbers ahead of the launch of the evoSPEED. Potentially the most radical looking boot of all time, the inspiration for the 'Razzle Dazzle' camouflage pattern came from WWI war ships and car manufacturers. As the pattern distorts the lines and shapes of an object, to conceal it's true identity.
Masters of the eccentric, we'd love to hear your thoughts on PUMA's eye-catching football boots, and let us know if you have a personal favourite. Join the conversation online, on Twitter and on Facebook.
