The Growing Rift Between Cleats

Twenty, ten, even five years ago, there wasn’t a whole lot of variety in soccer cleats.

Soccer cleats were all what we now consider ‘classic’ cleats – comfortable, heavy, and most importantly, without gimmicks. But there has been a soccer cleat revolution lately as companies make lines of cleats that are completely based around gimmicks and tricks.

As this continues to happen, we will observe a huge rift between the types of different soccer cleats, and you’ll have to make a decision as to which camp you belong to.

In with the new

And out with the old

The Power Camp

The power camp, otherwise known as Concave Sports’ domain, is going to grow rapidly over the next couple years. Concave’s cleats have a large plastic metatarsal guard on the top of the cleats, which aids greatly with power and accuracy on your shots. In my opinion, Concave’s PT line is the only true line of power boots out there right now. There are cleats like the Puma Powercat and Adidas Predator X, but these cleats are more of a hybrid variety. Concave’s line is entirely based around this idea of the metatarsal guard, and it is the identifying feature on their cleats. This plastic, although it definitely works, is essentially the central gimmick for the up and coming power cleat camp.

The Speed Camp

As power cleats get heavier and heaver as they add new components to increase shot power, some cleats are getting lighter and lighter. Although it’s no longer the lightest cleat in the world, the Adidas Adizero is the flagship cleat of this movement. Companies are trying to strip away every extraneous part of the cleat in order to make them as light as possible. This lightness then translates into speed for the players who wear them. This camp is going to be concerned with simply competing to make the lightest cleat possible. Look at it this way – The Puma v1.10 SL (the lightest cleat in the world) is less than half the weight of the Concave PT+ Classic (the newest innovation in the power camp).

The Classic Camp

Some cleat companies are going to try to capitalize on a ‘retro’ movement, back to the way cleats used to be. A great (and new!) example of this is Pele Sports. They are making a cleat that has absolutely no gimmicks – it is the essence of a classic cleat. Pros won’t wear classic cleats – they will definitely be divided into one of the bigger camps. But these classic cleats are targeted at non-professional players who just want a cleat without a trick. These cleats are simple, comfortable, durable, and fairly heavy. Cleat companies won’t offer up huge sponsorships to wear these cleats, but they will still sell to people who want to wear retro/classic cleats.

The Hybrid Camp

Most cleat companies will try to save a couple lines as hybrid lines – cleats that aren’t quite power cleats, aren’t quite speed cleats, and aren’t classic cleats. These cleats, like the CTR360, will stick around for a few more years, but I see them disappearing as more and more people want specialized cleats that either give them a huge boost in power or in speed.

So, which camp are you in?

This article is by a new author:

Hi everyone, I’m Andy, co-owener of ReviewSoccer.com, and this is my first article on SoccerLens. Please critique it and visit my website! I’m also working on a new website with information about indoor cleats, if you want to visit that as well.