Predator 24

Thirty years after a boot changed football, the Predator marked its anniversary by looking forward.

The Predator 24 was not a retro exercise. It wore its anniversary as context, not costume. The grip came from STRIKESKIN — rubber fins placed in the strike zones, a direct line back to the fins of the original. The upper was HYBRIDTOUCH 2.0, a synthetic with a suede-like feel designed to behave like leather. And for the first time in years, a fold-over tongue was offered alongside laced and laceless versions — the single most recognisable Predator feature, back where it belonged.

Anniversary editions celebrated the lineage. Players who had grown up in the 2000s and 2010s wearing the boot’s descendants now pulled on the Predator 24 with the particular feeling of something completing a circle.

The Predator had outlasted its rivals, survived its own disappearance, reinvented itself many times, and arrived at its thirtieth year still claiming the space it always had: the boot for the player who believes that football is a game of control, and that control can be engineered.

It started with rubber fins on a boot designed by former Liverpool midfielder Craig Johnston. Thirty years later, the fins were still there.