To become world champion in 1954, the German football team needed talent, luck - and the right shoes. Adi Dassler had developed football shoes that provided particularly firm grip on the soft ground that was soaked with rain. With his idea - the flexible screw-in stud shoe - Dassler revolutionised football. Soon after this surprise victory, the “miracle of Bern”, half the football world was playing with the new shoes.

To this day, athletes around the globe achieve victory in sportswear from Germany. Almost half of all football shoes are developed here and 18 of 32 teams competing at the football world championship are equipped by German manufacturers. There are plenty of opportunities to test them out, as no country has more sports clubs. While the athletes work up a sweat, the engineers are already working on the equipment of the future: the jersey that measures heart rate and the football that tells the referee when it is in the goal. All the players have to do themselves is score the goals.

"TInnovative 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 are all made of Neopor®, an innovative plastic material by BASF, and coated with a new metallic paint developed by BASF Coatings.

Find out more about the Walk of Ideas