Toni Kroos could play football forever.
Or so it seemed. He still performs with insouciant class but, at 34, he has announced he will retire after Euro 2024. Since making his professional debut as a 17-year-old in 2007, he has won the World Cup with Germany and six Champions League titles with Bayern Munich and Real Madrid.
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And he has achieved almost everything while wearing the same pair of football boots, first released in 2013: the Adidas Adipure 11Pro, footwear from a different era. Its uncomplicated stitching and simple heel dates it, placing it behind the times in an industry that has always moved forward.
Boot technology is adventurous. New studs, new leather, new grooves that make the ball do this, or that. For 11 years, Kroos has eschewed those advantages for a boot that works for him.
It is hard to argue with his decision. Kroos will leave the pitch for the last time when Germany are either eliminated or victorious at Euro 2024, and when he does, he will receive an ovation from every side of that stadium, to be remembered as one of the finest players of his generation. A midfielder of poise, precision and elegance, and with this unusual story as part of his legacy.
Football players are creatures of habit. They have their pre-match routines, their socks always pulled to the same height, their sleeves always long or always short. The boots change, though. When a new pair is launched by a manufacturer, they are on the feet of every sponsored player within days, ready to be seen — and bought — by the watching world.
But Kroos has always resisted that trend.
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Bjorgvin Hreinsson is Adidas’s Global Product Manager. When he speaks to The Athletic over Zoom, he has two boots in his hand. One is Kroos’ original, fabled Adipure 11Pro, and the other is a commemorative edition, which is gold at the heel and has the names of Kroos’ three children written on the sole.
“When Toni first started in Adidas,” Hreinsson says, “it was in Predators when he was at Bayer Leverkusen.”
Predators were the iconic boot of the previous era. Their distinctive grooves, which promised greater control of the ball, helped make it one of the best-selling boots of all time. The Predator belongs alongside the Puma King, Nike’s Mercurials or the Mizuno Wave Cup as having the capacity to conjure nostalgia among fans, and a longing for a different age. Kroos, explains Hreinsson, became entwined with the next generation.
“When we launched the Adipure series in 2008, he was one of the key faces. Since then, he’s worn the Adidas Adipure 11Pro throughout almost the entire duration of Adipure’s lifecycle.
“Then he just kept it. We kept evolving and the industry grew, but for Toni, all the way since the end of 2013 when this boot came out, he just fell in love with it.”
Kroos’ affection for his boots is well-known. Footage of him cleaning his boots in a stadium sink are now one of the staples of his best performances. A craftsman taking care of his tools? It’s a bit on the nose but the saccharine cliches are hard to resist.
Toni Kroos washing his iconic Adidas boots by himself.
A simple man who does great things! 🤍 pic.twitter.com/NY8YGsOsJO
— Madrid Zone (@theMadridZone) May 21, 2024
He always wears white. He likes the elegance. But he loves the way they feel.
“The leather is the key thing,” Hreinsson says. “We designed the boots to give the most smooth, natural touch of the ball, and Toni’s probably the best representation of that — the way you see him control the ball and how his first touch always needs to be pinpoint accurate for him to get into a position to make a key pass.
“It’s the material. He really wants that soft touch and just to feel confident.”
Hreinsson holds the two boots up again, turning them upside down to show the differences between their studs. A football boot separates into two parts: the top, with the laces and, in this case, the leather, and the bottom, into which the studs are fixed — the sole plate.
In the modern day, many footballers customise their boots. Different players want stability in different areas and there are examples of rogue studs in strange places. Andres Iniesta, the former Barcelona and Spain midfielder, had many studs added to his boot, particularly towards the toe, because he felt they gave him more grip. Others choose a mixture of moulded and screw-in studs. Arsenal and England’s Declan Rice has more than 20 modifications to his boots.
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Kroos has resisted those fashions. In technology terms, his stud preferences come from the era of the second-generation iPhone. “When we launched the boot in 2013,” Hreinsson says, “Toni was using a stud plate that we’ve had since 2009. Even when he started wearing the boot, it was still customised for him and he’s kept that consistent.”
Today, moulded studs have taken all sorts of sizes and shapes. Kroos’ boot still has entirely blade-shaped studs, which that should be a disadvantage. Hreinsson explains: “Stud plates in the early 2000s and late ’90s were all bladed. Today, they’ve gone much more conical, with those different shapes to be more speedy and grippy.”
It makes sense. A conical stud is a sharper shape. A blade is flatter and does not exert as much pressure as intensively in any area.
“For example, Lionel Messi (another player who wears Adidas boots) chooses conical studs in the front of his boot because they provide an easier way of running and getting out of the grass,” says Hreinsson.
“But also with blades, in theory, they shouldn’t get a lot of good ground contact. You can also get stuck in the ground quite easily but this is just something that Toni’s loved. It’s very unusual for a player in today’s game to choose bladed studs.”
Over the years, the story of Kroos’s boots has become part of his legend. So much so that Adidas re-released the Adipure 11Pro in October 2023, as a limited-edition remake. There was one key difference, though.
“When we re-released the boot, it was with tooling (sole plates and studs) that we used on the Copa brand (the Adipure’s successor),” says Hreinsson. “The specific plate that Toni uses only exists in his size — in 8.5 (US size 9.5). The mould got destroyed years ago and so only exists now consistently in the factory for that one size, and so that we can make his boots specifically. That’s quite cool.
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“But also, if you were to look at these two boots (Kroos’ original and the version being re-released to coincide with this tournament) together, they would look quite similar — at least from above. But the one he wears is 90 grams (3.2oz, almost 50 per cent) heavier.
“That’s quite mind-blowing but obviously for him, it’s perfect — and you can’t really question his decision, right?
“But the boot would feel heavier and more chunky on your foot, because our modern boots are way lighter. Also, with the coating, if it’s raining or if the pitch is wet — which football pitches predominantly are these days, they always water them — the older boot would get even heavier, because the leather isn’t coated in the same way.”
Kroos may have been phenomenally successful but, for much of the past decade, he has been a pitchman for a product that has been unavailable to buy since 2014. Has Adidas ever tried to get him to wear a new model?
“We tried to get Toni into different boots and he’s tested them,” says Hreinsson. “The feedback has never been negative, but it’s always been more of, ‘This is what I’m comfortable with, and this is why I’m playing very well’.
“But you can’t really break a stable relationship like this one, can you?
“I mean you talk about Disney love stories and stuff like that, and that’s kind of what this is: the perfect match.”
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(Top photo: Toni Kroos’ boots last month by Angel Martinez via Getty Images)