Pink Football Boots - Where It All Began
Pink Football Boots - Where It All Began
Remembering the original pink football boots from Nike.
The Swoosh went all fabulous back in 2008 when they released a 'Rosa' Mercurial Vapor IV. You only have to watch the original tease video above to see the effect it had on players. It was a something never seen before and something, which to be honest we never thought we'd see again, but with other brands now joining the pink party are they becoming more acceptable and more importantly, would you wear them?
With the recent spate of pink boot releases we're starting to ponder whether your everyday player would actually wear a pair. Yeah, they're entertaining, they get people talking but would you seriously rock up on a Saturday afternoon in a pair? If you're looking for someone to thank/blame for all this madness then look no further than Nike.
Nike's tag line around the launch campaign of the pink Vapor was 'You Better Be Quick' meaning they were going to fly off the shelves but a more literal meaning was that if you weren't quick, you were going to get a good kicking! It was going to take a brave player to wear them and there's no doubt a lot of Nike athletes refused to go anywhere near them.
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Nicklas Bendtner was the man flying the pink flag in the Premier League, the Arsenal striker caused a huge buzz when he laced up in the extravagant colourway in Arsenal's 3-0 defeat to Man City in November 2008 before scoring a late winner against Dynamo Kiev to fire Arsenal into the Champions League knockout stages. leading to 'They pink it's all over' slapped across the back page of The Sun.
Marco Materazzi was perhaps the strangest choice of player to slip into the Rosa Mercurial but to be fair he didn't really care what boots he was wearing, as long as he could kick people in them. Had Inter's legendary hard man gone soft or did he give the boots a little bit of street cred? Maybe Zidane nutted the hardness out of him.
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Andrei Arshavin and Milan Baros were also persuaded to get involved in the pink action, Arshavin played his final few games for Zenit in the Vapor IV before his move to London and Baros found out what 'What are you wearing mate?' meant in Turkish. 
Juventus' Amauri and Marseille's Hatem Ben Arfa pulled the pink straw in Italy and France and Bayern's Franck Ribery featured in a crazy Pink Panther commercial. So all in all a decent player line up and with Beckham, Anelka and Aguero all sporting pink for other brands, the question remains... Would you honestly wear a pair of pink football boots?
