Watching the Euros has got me thinking about coloured football boots. I know it’s not a new concept, but growing up in the 70s and 80s - boots were black leather with white or silver detailing. On occasion red, green or yellow adorned the stripes, but that was pretty much into until the turn of the new millennia when colour started to creep into football design for the uppers.

Or was it? Coloured uppers actually first appeared in the early 70s although choice was much more limited and popularity questionable (I don’t recall seeing anyone playing in them, at least in the UK). Over the course of the games I’ll be dipping into the archives and showing some models made by both adidas and Puma which would have certainly made you stand out from the crowd.

Adidas produced a couple of coloured boots in the 60s such as the ‘Stabiloflex’ and ‘Sport’, but these were multi-purpose cleats suitable for hockey, field handball as well as football. The first football boots I could find were ‘Gerd Müller Blue Star’ introduced in 1973 and the third adidas boot named after ‘Das Bomber’ the Bayern Munich and German national team star.

Puma’s equivalent actually pre-dates the Blue Star. Netzer Azur was introduced in 1972 and like his brother, Rudi saw the marketing value of signature boots, this one adorning the name of Borussia Mönchengladbach midfielder and twice German Footballer of the Year - Günter Netzer.