David Villa beats Messi to first adiZero goal
Spain’s David Villa became the first player to score in official competition wearing the lightest football boot in the world, the F50 adiZero, on June 21.
The Barcelona striker opened the scoring on 17 minutes in Spain’s match against Honduras at the FIFA 2010 World Cup in South Africa. He controlled a long pass out to the left wing and beat three Honduras defenders before hitting a powerful right-foot shot towards the far corner of the goal. Honduras keeper Noel Valladares got his right hand to the ball but could not keep it out.
He repeated the feat on 51 minutes when his shot from the edge of the area took a deflection off defender Chávez and looped into the goal, and he should have made it three when Spain were awarded a penalty kick ten minutes later. His shot from the spot missed the left-hand post by centimetres, but went wide. Spain won the game 2-0.
David Villa is one of two players to have launched the new boot at the World Cup. The other, his Barcelona team-mate Lionel Messi, wore them first in Argentina’s opening match against Nigeria. He drew a blank, although he played well on the day and his team won 1-0. David Villa had a quiet match when Spain made its debut in the competition, losing 0-1 to Switzerland.
In Argentina’s next match, a 4-1 victory over South Korea, Lionel Messi again played well, hitting the post, but failed to score, leaving his new strike-partner for next season to have the honour of scoring the first adiZero goals.
At the press launch of the boot in May, David Villa said the idea of wearing the lightest possible boot appealed to him. He commented: “As a striker, you are always looking for an edge. A lighter, faster boot will sometimes give me an extra half-second, which might be all I’ll need to score.”
When Lionel Messi first wore the boots in the Nigeria match, it was immediately clear that he was wearing different boots from the light blue ones he sported at the press launch, causing some observers to wonder if the World Player of the Year for 2010 had changed his mind about the F50 adiZero. However, adidas World Cup spokesman, Erik van Leeuwen, told sportstextiles.com: “Lionel was indeed wearing the F50 adiZeros, but in a special purple-blue colourway he wanted to use for the World Cup only.”
