We don’t much delve behind the curtain of the football boot design industry here on Footy-Boots.com, but sometimes a story hits that demands further explanation and a bit of a signal boost to reach folk that don’t normally concern themselves with the inside of the industry.
One such story landed last night, as Denis Dekovic (a name you should be familiar with, but we’ll get into why a little later) took to his Instagram page to announce that he – along with fellow Nike designers Mark Miner and Marc Dolce – would be #Teamadidas from 2015.
Focusing on Dekovic for the time being, this is massive news for football boots – in particular the adidas/Nike rivalry – going forward.
After working with Lotto on the laceless Zhero Gravity back in the mid-2000’s, Dekovic has been working with Nike over the last few years.
His most notable early influence was on the Nike GS which launched in 2012 for the London Olympic Games, and became one of the most sought-after football boots of the year, as well as it’s main attraction of being made of almost entirely recyclable materials.
But you’ll mostly have seen Dekovic’s face on Nike promotional videos over the last 18 months – with Nike positioning their Design Director as one of the key brains behind the Hypervenom, Tiempo V and the revolutionary Magista Obra and Superfly.
We know adidas have massive plans for their football boots in 2015, but having Dekovic on board means that by the time we hit the next World Cup, adidas’ cleats will certainly have a different flavour to them – and could even be their best yet.
Miner and Dolce have successfully transformed the Nike Running and Nike Sportswear labels, respectively, with technologies like FlyKnit, Lunarlon and Tech Fleece being some of the Swoosh’s crowning achievements in their tenure in addition to work on the NFL uniforms when Nike took that deal over.
But most importantly, along with football, Miner and Dolce have made everything they’ve worked on cool – a certain je nais se quois that adidas has missed up until recently.
As for Nike, their forward-thinking, often-edgy style seems to be part of the culture, and talent of that mindset seems to be either attracted to that or bred internally – so we’ve no doubt the next Denis Dekovic is already working on whatever will follow the Magista over in Oregon.
But we’re sure adidas aren’t too proud to admit, an injection of the ‘X-Factor’ that these three bring is exactly what’s needed to push their game to the next level (and is probably looking a wiser investment than the Manchester United kit deal right about now…).
It’s so easy to have a dig at Man U at the moment. Has the writer been at the top of his/her profession for 20 years?
No. They’re taking a dig at adidas. Stop trying to warp words so you can start an argument