Predator Mutator 20

In January 2020, adidas answered the question. The answer was DEMONSKIN.

Hundreds of tiny rubber spikes — 406 of them on the top-tier boot — erupted across the forefoot and instep in a pattern generated with the help of a computer algorithm and years of player testing. Different shapes and sizes were placed where the ball is struck, received and spun. The boot looked unlike anything that had ever been worn on a football pitch. Some called it monstrous. That was rather the point.

The silhouette matched the texture: an ultra-high collar and a low-cut front, a split soleplate, and an upper that wrapped under the foot. This was the Predator’s rubber-fin heritage reborn for a new century — not a nod to 1994, but a direct descendant of it.

The colourways were theatrical — the traditional black, white and red at launch, then vivid yellows, pinks and greens. When football went on to play in empty stadiums later that year, the Mutator gave the game something to look at.

The name was apt. This was not evolution in a straight line. It was mutation.