06 Jul World Cup cleats and goals tracked closely by Nike, Adidas
Most World Cup soccer fans probably are keeping track of the score of their favorite team, maybe the performances of a player or two.
The folks at Nike and Adidas are no different. But they — and the most serious fans — take their enthusiasm to another level, keeping tabs on not only who is scoring the most goals but also what kind of shoes they were wearing.
Bragging rights over which top player scored the top World Cup goal wearing the brand’s shoe is a big deal to the brands. Nike can tell you that Steve Archibald of Scotland scored Nike’s first-ever World Cup goal in 1982. Nike chief Mark Parker, in a presentation to stock analysts in 2010, noted that Andres Iniesta scored the winning goal in Spain’s 1-0 victory over The Netherlands that year. He didn’t mention, of course, that Adidas was the uniform outfitter of Spain.
Through Friday, Nike cleats had accounted for 70 of the 149 World Cup goals scored, Adidas 65, Puma 8, Mizuno 3 and Warrior 3, according to the website soccerbible.com. But the site also showed the Adidas F50 with a slight edge as the top goal scoring shoe over the Nike Mecurial.
Through Friday, the website soccerbible.com showed these results for top-performing cleats:
Rank Goals Shoe Top player wearing Goals
1. 42 Adidas F50 James Rodriguez, Colombia 5
2. 39 Nike Mecurial Enner Valencia, Ecuador 3
3. 20 Adidas Predator Bryan Ruiz, Costa Rica 2
4. 11 Nike HyperVenom Neymar Jr., Brazil 4
5. 11 Nike Magista Obra Abdelmoumene Djabou, Algeria 2
6. 6 Nike Tiempo Andre Ayew, Ghana 2
7. 6 Puma evoPOWER Asamoah Gyan, Ghana 2
8. 3 Adidas Nitrocharge Carlo Costly, Honduras 1
9. 2 Warrior Superheat Tim Cahill, Australia 2
10. 2 Nike CTR360 Jermaine Jones, USA 1