Antonio Floro Flores, Olise before Olise

It was in 2006 when fashion designer Dirk Bikkembergs, founder and creative mind behind the eponymous fashion house, ventured into the world of football. It was the same year that the famous Tirosegno boots made their market debut, worn by Ludovic Giuly and Giorgio Chiellini, the first generation of boots designed by the Antwerp Six creative, and thus the most talked-about and remembered over the years. Like in a movie trilogy, or when music artists release a hugely successful album, unmatched by subsequent projects, after the Tirosegno came two more generations of boots, but none achieved the status of the first. After the Bix and Tirosegno, the last model, known as Capitano, was undoubtedly the one with the most experimental design: the upper was wrapped in a layer of yellow or red rubber, featuring a large "C" (two color variations were available), referencing the traditional captain’s armband. It's hard to understand why, but the only professional footballer to wear those boots was Antonio Floro Flores, the Udinese striker at the time, who used the color of the Capitano to match his boots with the kit: the Udinese Away kit for the 2009/10 season was in fact the same color as the boots, yellow and black.

Antonio Floro Flores had in fact anticipated a trend that has exploded today with Michael Olise, namely the almost obsessive matching of the color of boots. Olise continues to experiment with the Bayern Munich and French National Team kits, but already in 2022, during the match between Crystal Palace and Millwall, he wore Nike Hypervenom Phantom 3 boots that matched the kit color, a pair of boots from the 2017 Motion Blur collection. Of course, Ronaldo Nazário, for the 2006 World Cup, arrived in Germany with boots perfectly matching the Brazilian kit and the colors of the Brazilian flag, but the effect of the Capitano boots on Floro Flores had a completely different impact, especially since it was a planned operation from start to finish, in terms of the communication of the boots. It was in fact Dirk Bikkembergs who once again chose a face to associate with a pair of boots. It would be interesting to know what criteria the designer used to choose his ambassadors, as there is no obvious thread linking Giuly, Chiellini, and Floro Flores.

Antonio Floro Flores became the protagonist of the communication campaign for the boots, from the initial idea to the photo campaign, taking it all the way to the field. Dirk Bikkembergs even created a booklet—now a rare gem, but appealing only to a small niche of people—entitled Do You Wanna Be a Capitano?, with Antonio Floro Flores taking part as an exceptional model. For the rest, the boots didn't leave an unforgettable legacy: the rubber band feature wrapping the upper was partially picked up by adidas with the launch of the Nitrocharge line. A groundbreaking boot for a design never seen before, but it couldn't withstand the test of time.