When the world’s top football players step out onto the pitch kitted out in Nike boots and apparel for the opening FIFA World Cup game this June, it might be tempting for the casual observer to assume that Nike has always been a part of the beautiful game.
This however, is really not the case. The company was set up in the 1960s as Blue Ribbon Sports to import Japanese running shoes into the US, and almost all of its early efforts were focused on runners and track-and-field athletes.
Emanating from a nation that lacks the deeply ingrained football cultures and traditions of Europe and South America, the sport did not come easily to Nike. Indeed, it took time to learn the game and to understand what was required of the equipment needed to play it.
Our new book Nike Football Boots tells the story of the company's entry into, and eventual global dominance of, world football. The book is a lavishly illustrated homage to the beautiful game and the legendary footballers who bring it to life – and, of course, the boots they wear. Created in close collaboration with Nike, it charts the history of the brand’s football journey, from the all-black leather boot introduced in the early 70s – the first of any shoe to feature the famous Swoosh – to the present day, through four key product lines that encapsulate Nike’s design ethos: Tiempo, Mercurial, Total 90, and Phantom.
Along the way, readers will discover stories behind the boots worn by football’s greatest names, including Brazilian striker Ronaldo, Portuguese phenomenon Cristiano Ronaldo, US Women’s National Team star Megan Rapinoe, and French icon Kylian Mbappé, among others.
Generously illustrated with almost 500 images, Nike Football Boots showcases boot close-ups, on-feet shots, concepts, posters and advertising, film screenshots, material swatches, sketches, prototypes, and ephemera from the Department of Nike Archives (DNA). A 12-page glossy insert displays every model of boot, dating from 1971 to current day, in the DNA boot room, including the latest Tiempo model. The back cover features the signature Nike Swoosh and the title translated into over ten different languages, highlighting the global appeal of the beautiful game, while the front cover showcases some of the most emblematic boots ever released.
Award-winning author Caleb Azumah Nelson distils the nostalgic magic of growing up a football fan in southeast London across four illuminating essays, discussing how the culture and style of the period informed the evolution of Nike’s iconic footwear.
Meanwhile, an accessible introduction by curator Eleanor Watson provides an overview of football design more globally, while an afterword by ELLE Mexico Editor-in-Chief Claudia Cándano de la Peza discusses athletes as style icons.
Thomas Turner, a historian and lecturer at the London College of Fashion, delves deep into the materials, form, fit, design, and technology that makes these boots special. We thought you might like to read a short excerpt from his illuminating piece in the book. When you've finished reading, take a closer look at Nike Football Boots in the store.
Sketches made in 1992 for the Tiempo Premier, released in 1994. Image: Courtesy and © Nike, Inc.
When the world’s top football players step onto the pitch kitted out in Nike boots and apparel, it is easy to assume that Nike has always been a part of the beautiful game. But this is not the case. The company was set up in the 1960s as Blue Ribbon Sports to import Japanese running shoes into the United States, and almost all of its early efforts were focused on runners and track-and-field athletes. Coming from a nation that lacks the deeply ingrained football cultures and traditions of Europe and South America, the sport did not come easily to Nike. It took time to learn the game and to understand what was required of the equipment needed to play it.
Mercurial Vapor Superfly III, 2011. Image: Courtesy and © Nike, Inc.
For most of its early life, Nike was an outsider at football, a foreign student trying to pick it up from established masters. It was not until Nike was approaching corporate middle age that it was finally accepted as a legitimate presence on the football pitch. That process of learning is most apparent in the Tiempo, the oldest name in the Nike Football boot room. Marketed now as a classic model that offers comfort, excellent touch, and tenacious grip, it is a stalwart that has served generations of players. It has evolved and changed with the passing seasons, but it remains rooted in traditional boot design.
Tiempo Legend IV Elite, 2011. Image: Courtesy and © Nike, Inc.
Today the Tiempo acts as a vital statement of the company’s heritage and ongoing relevance within the world’s most popular game. It is the sum of everything Nike has learned about football, signaling their mastery of the craft of making football boots.
No other boot encapsulates Nike’s football journey—or its knowledge of footballers’ needs—in quite the same way. Yet the Tiempo did not always exist. There was once a time before Nike Football, a time before Tiempo. The guys at Blue Ribbon Sports who created the Nike brand in the 1970s were not football players or fans. Which makes it all the more odd that the first shoe to bear the Nike Swoosh was a football boot.
Nike Phantom 6, designs, 2025. Image: Courtesy and © Nike, Inc.
In early 1971, Phil Knight was desperately trying to ensure the survival of Blue Ribbon Sports after the relationship with his Japanese partner, Onitsuka, soured. Their agreement forbade him from importing track-and-field cleats from other manufacturers, but he figured he could import a boot and market it to football players. Secretly he ordered ten thousand pairs from Fabrica de Calzado Canada, a manufacturer in Guadalajara, Mexico, and asked that his new check mark logo— for which he paid graphic design student Carolyn Davidson thirty-five dollars—be stitched onto their sides.
Phantom Luna promotional campaign featuring French midfielder Grace Geyoro, 2023. Image: Courtesy and © Nike, Inc.
The model he chose was Canada’s Mundial-70, named for the football World Cup held in Mexico in 1970. Made of black leather with white laces and a white molded plastic outsole stitched to the upper, it followed a pattern popular in the 1960s: low-cut ankle; slight heel tab; reinforced lace stays; small toe cap; and short, soft studs for hard ground. Canada’s Mundial-70 branding was on the tongue and sole, fat white Swooshes on the sides. On the suggestion of Jeff Johnson, Nike’s first full-time employee, it was renamed the Nike. Pitched as a multipurpose football shoe, it was delivered to stores in the United States in June 1971. Sales were good at first, but as temperatures dropped, buyers found the plastic outsole cracked and returns increased. In the end, nine thousand of the ten thousand pairs were sold at bargain-basement prices. The model was dropped, and Canada received no further orders. It was not an auspicious start for the new brand.
Air Zoom Total 90 III SG, 2004. Image: Courtesy and © Nike, Inc.
Football was, at best, an afterthought at Nike through most of the 1970s. As the company grew and its innovative running and basketball shoes became hugely popular, inexpensive off-the-shelf football boots sourced from manufacturers around the world padded out the range offered to retailers. Football boots were reimagined as multipurpose cleats, sold as suitable for a variety of games played on grass: football, lacrosse, field hockey, Frisbee. Shoes such as 1974’s Turf Quik and Turf Star, 1975’s Arsenal, and the Striker in 1976—a leather boot made in Czechoslovakia—all fit the bill. These were not truly Nike shoes; they were ordered in and branded to look like Nike products, and none contained any of the imagination being channeled into Nike’s core running products.
Nike Phantom 6, 2025. Image: Courtesy and © Nike, Inc.
Things started to change in 1978. That year Nike sponsored its local team, the Portland Timbers, and began learning what football players needed from their boots. Perhaps more significantly, Nike opened a factory in the small mill town of Heckmondwike, in West Yorkshire, England. The town had been making footwear, including football boots, for almost a century. The Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS) built a factory there in the 1880s, and in the 1950s it produced a range of popular boots designed with the celebrated English winger, Stanley Matthews. He had been so impressed by the lightweight, low-cut boots worn by South American players at the 1950 World Cup that he brought a pair home and asked CWS’s craftsmen to replicate them—first for his own use, then for the mass market. With a production facility in the country that created the modern game and the ability to draw on local residual knowledge, Nike’s football range broadened and became more sophisticated.
Hypervenom Phantom “Anti-Clog Traction”, 2016. Image: Courtesy and © Nike, Inc.
Gradually, Nike football boots began to improve. As a mark of their desire to establish a presence in the British and European football market, in the early 1980s Nike signed deals with a trio of top British professionals: Ian Rush of Liverpool and Wales, Glenn Hoddle of Tottenham Hotspur and England, and Charlie Nicholas of Arsenal and Scotland. A team deal was done with Aston Villa, who in 1982 were the surprise winners of the European Cup. Nike took out advertisements in magazines, and promotional activities increased. Buyers and fans in Britain at least began to regard Nike as a legitimate, if foreign, presence within the game, and for the first time Nike began producing boots that could be regarded as suitable for serious players.
Total 90 Laser II, 2009. Image: Courtesy and © Nike, Inc.
The first Tiempo was a product of this environment. Made in Heckmondwike and introduced in 1983–84, it was billed as “the most advanced soccer shoe in the Nike line.” The new model had a one-piece black leather upper, a Nike PermaFoam insole, a high heel tab, and, as was then fashionable, a long tongue that flopped over the laces. Two soleplates were offered: one with six screw-in nylon studs—four at the forefoot, two at the heel—and another with polyurethane molded studs. Additional panels on the upper and wavy lace stays gave it a family resemblance to Nike running shoes. A little optimistically, the large Swooshes on the sides and the heel tab were colored gold. It was not particularly innovative, and although it was a good boot, it was not yet at the level of the very best from Germany and Italy. Those were made of kangaroo leather—a soft, lightweight, and flexible material that was slow to absorb water and that had become the material of choice for professional players.
Tiempo VIII Elite, 2019. Image: Courtesy and © Nike, Inc
The Tiempo was made of cheaper calfskin. Nevertheless, Nike was learning, and it was a move in the right direction. An advertisement showed Rush, Hoddle, and Nicholas beneath the slogan “Only the finest material goes into a pair of Nike boots.” Another, more tongue-in-cheek, ad had the new model endorsed by Ian Botham, the England cricket captain, who had made a series of football appearances for lower-league Scunthorpe United. The Tiempo was “As recommended by Scunthorpe’s reserve centre forward.”
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