As you all know, Real Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas has been wearing a negative-cut boot practically since the start of his professional career. Although he made his debut in the flat-cut adidas Magnetic Touch, ever since the first models Reebok made for him, the negative cut has been the only style he has been seen competing in. For the past few weeks, Iker has been wearing the new adidas Predator Pro in white/black/yellow. Since then, there has been much discussion about various aspects: Is it a flat or negative cut? What is the white wrist strap? Does it alter the thumb? Let’s first take a look at the history of Casillas’ gloves.
He made his debut with adidas in a flat-cut style and used numerous adidas and Reebok models with a flat cut; at the time of Iker’s debut, neither the variety of cuts nor modifications for professional goalkeepers were particularly common.
Until 2003, Iker Casillas used models with a flat cut. The last model I can recall with that cut is the following:
But then came Euro 2004, the second major tournament Iker Casillas had played in for the Spanish national team and the first in which he started as the undisputed first-choice goalkeeper (remember that in 2002 he played in Korea and Japan, but that was following the incident with Cañizares’s perfume). Reebok stopped making standard gloves for him and gave the Real Madrid goalkeeper the technical means to modify the glove. The negative cut was the main technology that Iker introduced into his gloves:
Over the following years, Iker continued to use the negative cut and modified the gloves as he saw fit. He was already one of the world’s leading goalkeepers and had earned that right, but he was never a goalkeeper who asked for special features for his gloves. Good grip and a negative cut—those were his only requirements.
Interestingly, following a finger injury and the need to bandage the injured finger to the healthy one to reinforce it, the famous ‘four-finger glove’ emerged, with which he was crowned champion of Euro 2008:
And so it went until he signed with adidas in 2011. It was very easy for the German brand to make the glove to his liking because the Response Pro, the glove of the time, really did meet all of Iker’s needs: negative cut and good grip. Furthermore, the new wristband solved his problems with bandages or his characteristic habit of constantly adjusting his wrists:
The 2012 Predator Pro was a follow-up to the Response model and also met Iker’s expectations to such an extent that he didn’t make any modifications to it:
He was even one of the first top-tier goalkeepers to dare to wear coloured palms, though always with a negative cut and a completely standard glove:
But now comes the launch of the new Predator Pro glove, with which he will start 2013, and controversy erupts...
- What is that strange white elastic band covering the fastening?
- Is it really a negative cut... or has he switched to a flat cut?
- Is the thumb loop much wider than on the standard Predator Pro?
The images we’ve seen really do justify all these doubts.
It seems it’s still a standard glove, and here’s why:
- The adidas wristband and fastening are still there, but Iker wears an elastic band over them – black for training and white for matches. What’s the reason for this? We are surprised that it’s functional, because if nothing else, the adidas fastening secures the wrist tightly, and you’d almost rather loosen it than tighten it. So we can’t find a reasonable explanation for this... Nor do we think that adidas, which has finally managed to project the image that its standard glove is accepted by a top-class player like Casillas, would modify the glove on its own initiative.
- It remains a negative cut. This is undoubtedly the hypothesis we are most certain of. The adidas negative cut is very distinctive: it has a very wide latex area in the finger zone, and the sides of the fingers have latex with minimal coverage. This gives the impression that it’s a loose fit because the fingers are flat and not as ‘rounded’ as they are with the traditional negative cut
- The latex thumb pad is the only remaining question we have to resolve, and the one we think Casillas is most likely to have modified. There are images where Casillas’s thumb pad appears larger than that of the standard glove.
What do you think? Is Casillas still using the standard glove, or has he started modifying the adidas Predator Pro?
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