Boot spotting: 7th April

Easter is normally a time to relax and be with our families. It’s also time for us to watch some fantastic football, and there was definitely lots of it on show this weekend between Good Friday and Easter Monday! With the Predator LZ getting it’s on pitch debut this weekend, it was a massive weekend of boot spots. Which stars were wearing which boots this week?

Samir Nasri (Manchester City) – adidas Predator LZ

One of the biggest things to have come out of last week was a special advertising campaign that would be run by adidas to promote it’s new Predator LZ. Each week will see a different zone of the boot revealed (you can catch them all right here on Soccer Reviews) until we go through all 5 of the zones, which will be when the boot is released. This week was on the ‘first touch’, and Samir Nasri, a former miCoach adiZero wearer, was chosen as one of the athletes who were considered to have an outstanding first touch.

Kaka (Real Madrid) – adidas Predator LZ

Accidentally or otherwise, Kaka revealed his own White/Orange Predator LZ on his Twitter page, meaning he was selected by adidas in the process as one of the representatives of the ‘first touch’ zone for the LZ! Considering we saw Kaka wearing the boots in training as well, it didn’t come as a huge surprise that Kaka was wearing the boots against Valencia this weekend. We’re going to see a new batch of players wearing the LZs next week, and they’ll be wearing boots that have a different section of the boot coloured orange, and you’ll have to hang around Soccer Reviews to see which zone will be featured next week!

Carlos Tevez (Manchester City) – Nike CTR360 Maestri II

Even though Tevez has been making appearances off the Manchester City bench for a number of weeks now, he’s been doing it in the Blue/White/Black CTR360 Maestri. Tevez has been hinting in the past two weeks that he would make a switch to the updated (albeit similar looking) Blue/White/Blue CTR360 Maestri II by wearing it during training sessions and while warming up before each game. Tevez was finally happy enough with his Blue/White/Blue CTR360 Maestri IIs to wear them in it’s first game this weekend against Arsenal.

Marcelo (Real Madrid) – Nike Mercurial Vapor VIII (Custom)

While we’ve seen a generally positive response to the Nike Mercurial Vapor VIII and player such as Stephen Ireland and James McClean making the switch to the new boot, it seems not everyone is overly happy with the garish boot. Strangely, Marcelo has ditched his Bright Mango Vapor VIIIs in favour for his Midnight Purple Superfly III. Which is what we’re supposed to think, but they really are disguised Vapor VIIIs, evidenced by the boot’s studs.. But Marcelo has added the bespoke orange laces from his Vapor VIIIs to his Midnight Purple Vapor VIIIs, which definitely makes the boots stand out!

Maynor Figueroa (Wigan) – Umbro SX Valor II

There was another boot switch made this weekend, but it wasn’t by an overly big player, or to that well known a boot for that matter. Wigan has a reputation for throwing up some strange boot spots, and it lived up to it’s reputation again this week. Even though Maynor Figueroa has been wearing adiZeros for most of the season, he made the switch this week to the Umbro SX Valor II, the power boot which was worn by John Terry a few years ago.

Wojeich Szczesny (Arsenal) – Nike T90 Laser IV KL

We’ve caught Wojeich Szczesny in quite a strange pose here (he goes on and pretends to drink it in the seconds following this photo!), but it’s his boots that we’re more interested in! Despite appearing in Nike CTR360 Maestri IIs for most of the season, Wojeich has made the move to the KL T90 Laser IV. We see goalkeepers in a wide variety of boots, but it seems the T90 Laser IV is a common choice for goalkeepers in the Premier League.

Jonathan Biabiany (Parma) – Nike Mercurial Vapor VIII

Every footballer in the Mercurial Vapor VIIIs is seemingly wearing the Bright Mango colourway, but we finally found somebody wearing the sleek Sail/Red colourway! We think the Sail/Red colourway is absolutely gorgeous, and we’re surprised nearly every footballer is going for the loud Bright Mango colourway. It’s nice to see someone in the alternative colourway of the Mercurial Vapor VIII, and we will hopefully find more footballers wearing the colourway.

Cesar Navas (Rubin Kazan) – adidas adiPure IV (Custom)

It’s not often that we can go over to Russia for a boot spot, but Cesar Navas’ adiPure IVs are very strange indeed! Customised with a bespoke Silver/Yellow colourway, they don’t seem to match with his Rubin Kazan kit. While adiPure IVs generally accentuate class, we’re not too sure if Navas’ Silver/Yellow adiPure IVs really have that same effect.

Adam Le Fondre (Reading) – Nike Mercurial Vapor VIII

So it turns out that Jonathan Biabiany wasn’t the player who also wore the Sail/Red Mercurial Vapor VIII for the first time this weekend. Reading’s Adam Le Fondre must have colour co-ordination in mind when he selected his new boots, and the Sail/Red Vapor VIII matches his Reading kit beautifully. Le Fondre gave his new boots a great debut, as his brace gave Reading a win over Neil Warnock’s Leeds.

Kenny Cooper (New York Red Bulls) – adidas Predator adiPower (Custom)

Someone in the White/Blue/Black Predator adiPower isn’t too out of the ordinary, it’s actually pretty common. This might have lead New York Red Bulls’ Kenny Cooper to customise his own Predator adiPowers so they stand out from everyone else’s by adding white laces to his boots, as opposed to the black laces on the regular version. Changing laces is a great way of customising your boots, and the white laces look fantastic on Cooper’s boots!

Guy Bwele (Sarawak FA) – adidas Predator LZ

Our last spot of the day is a bit of a surprise spot, and it’s thanks to Irawan Sudarsono tipping us off with this spot over on our Facebook page (which hit 3,000 ‘likes’ last week, yay!) Coming all the way from the Malaysian Super League, it’s actually a Predator LZ that we’ve never seen before, and it instantly reminds us of the iconic Electricity Predator Accelerator Ligas. It’s most likely a fake boot, but we’ll keep an eye out to see if this could be released as an official colourway.

That’s it for this week’s boot spotting. What was your favourite spot this week? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.