. . . consists of 30 shell segments per boot.

. . . is huge. Each boot is 12 metres long and weighs approx. 20 tonnes.

. . . consists of a steel skeleton construction, 2,700 square metres of woven fibre glass and approx. 600 cubic metres of Neopor® and has a painted surface area of 342 square metres.

. . . involved more than 100 people from planning and construction through to assembly.

. . . is made from Neopor®, an innovative material developed by BASF as the insulation of the future. The invention of Neopor® made the energy-saving “three-litre house” a reality.

. . . is coated with a new type of 3-layer metal lacquer, developed by BASF Coatings AG in Münster.

. . . was built by EDAG in Fulda, a company specialising in engineering and design.

. . . was produced using purely industrial manufacturing techniques.

. . . Adi Dassler made his first sports shoes entirely by hand, without the use of electricity or any other source of energy?

. . . after World War II, the Americans had all the baseball and basketball shoes and ice hockey boots for the army made at Dassler’s factory? At the time, Dassler made running shoes out of old baseball gloves.

. . . the Dasslers registered more than 700 patents?

. . . already by 1938 more than 1,000 boots and shoes were being made each day?

. . . the adidas boot “Copa Mundial” is the best-selling football boot of all time?

. . . the “Tokyo 64” running shoe, brought on to the market by adidas on the occasion of the Olympic Games in 1964, weighed only 96 grams?

. . . after Nike, the adidas group is the second largest sporting goods manufacturer in the world?

. . . since 1970 all the goals at Football World Cup Championships have been scored with adidas footballs?

. . . England’s King Henry VIII ordered the first pair of football boots to be made in 1526? Back then, football was a game played on an open field between two villages, in which hundreds of players attempted to blast the “ball” –a pig’s bladder filled with air – into the opposing village. Fighting often broke out, but it is not recorded whether the king himself was ever hit.

“Every now and again he said that everything was getting a bit too big and modern for him.”
(Franz Beckenbauer on Adi Dassler’s view of the changing sports world)

“Adi, you’re star-studded!”
(Sepp Herberger to Adi Dassler before the 1954 World Cup Final)

“I was staggered that this German shoemaker was prepared to spend hours making shoes for me personally. I was unbelievably thankful to him and would never have accepted a penny for wearing them.”
(Dick Fosbury, high jumper and inventor of the “Fosbury Flop”.)

“my adidas and me, close as can be / we make a mean team, my adidas and me / we get around together, rhyme forever / and we won’t be mad when worn in bad weather / my adidas”
(Run DMC, My adidas)

"Innovative Football Boots" is the first out of a total of six huge sculptures to make up the "Walk of Ideas" - a walk down the road of German inventiveness.

Each of the sculptures symbolises the richness of ideas and the spirit of invention which characterise Germany’s composers, writers, scientists, engineers and perfectionists. More German ideas are concealed within the sculptures themselves: they have all been made using the innovative plastic material Neopor® by BASF AG and coated with a special new paint developed by BASF Coatings.

Find out more about the Walk of Ideas