BOOTS OF THE PREMIER LEAGUE: MONTH ONE
Published: 09/10/2026 | By: Alex Courbat
Four games into the Premier League season, the goals are already flying, the new signings are settling in and the familiar faces are doing what familiar faces tend to do. Somewhere beneath all of that, another race has started to take shape.
We've been tracking every goal and assist across the opening weeks, player by player and silo by silo, to see what's really happening at pitch level. The results throw up some obvious names, a few surprises and at least one boot that clearly hasn't accepted that it's supposed to be old.
There are goalscorers, creators and speed merchants in the mix. There are players doing things in boots you might expect them to wear, alongside others making a rather convincing case for something completely different.
The interesting part is what happens when you stop looking at the players and start looking down.
One silo has opened up a sizeable lead. Another has assembled a pretty serious cast of characters. The league's leading scorer is flying the flag for a different boot entirely, while one of the fastest players in the competition has provided a rather perfect piece of evidence for his.
The numbers are only four games old, but there's already a story here.
Let's get into it.
The F50 Has Left Everyone At The Station
The adidas F50 has 35 goals after five games, putting it 12 clear of the Nike Mercurial Vapor 17.
Alexander Isak is the obvious headline name. Four goals for Liverpool in the F50 already has him sitting just behind Haaland in the Golden Boot race, while the Swede has also benefited from Cody Gakpo's creativity in the PUMA Ultra 7.
Rayan Cherki has been just as important to the F50's early charge. The Manchester City attacker has three goals and two assists, giving him five involvements in the silo already. Antoine Semenyo's F50 has produced two goals and three assists, with Leif Davis and Emersonn also contributing three involvements apiece.
That's before we get into Harvey Barnes, Jacob Ramsey, Tyrick Mitchell, Anton Stach, Thierno Barry and the rest of the supporting cast.
The F50 isn't being carried by one superstar. It's turning up everywhere.
Isak is doing his part at the sharp end in the F50, while Cherki is giving the boot a rather different profile at City. Semenyo is combining goals and assists, Davis is contributing from left-back and Emersonn has already managed three involvements.
That's what makes the number so striking. The F50 isn't simply attached to one hot striker.
It's everywhere.
Haaland Is Giving The Phantom Its Moment
For all the noise around the F50, the player sitting top of the actual Golden Boot race is wearing something completely different.
Erling Haaland has five goals in the Nike Phantom 6, accounting for the vast majority of the silo's seven goals.
It's a familiar Haaland story, just in a slightly less familiar boot. The Norwegian is doing the finishing, while Phil Foden has added two assists in the Phantom 6 and Marc Guéhi has contributed a goal and an assist. Daichi Kamada has been particularly useful in the creative department, registering three assists in the same boot.
The Phantom's numbers suddenly look a lot more interesting when you put names to them. Haaland is there to finish. Foden and Kamada are helping make things happen. Different jobs. Same boot.
The Vapor 17 Has Plenty Of Main Characters
The Vapor 17 sits second on 23 goals, powered by a pretty serious cast. Bruno Fernandes has three goals and an assist in the Mercurial. Marcus Tavernier has three goals in the same boot. Kevin Schade has three for Brentford. Dominic Calvert-Lewin has three for Leeds.
Cole Palmer has arguably been the most productive of the lot, with two goals and three assists in the Vapor 17. Yoane Wissa has a goal and an assist, while Dominik Szoboszlai has already found the net.
The names are doing a good job of making the numbers feel less surprising. This is a boot being worn by players who want to attack, create and generally make themselves a nuisance around the final third.
The Quiet Ones Are Creating, Too
The assist chart gives the Phantom a much bigger role, too. Eleven assists puts it third overall, behind only the F50 and Vapor 17, with Daichi Kamada supplying three of them and Phil Foden and Marc Guéhi adding one each.
Further down, the Predator is the competition's quiet overachiever. Pascal Groß, Martin Ødegaard and Riccardo Calafiori have combined for six assists between them, not an obvious trio of creators. The Superfly 11 tells a similar story through Morgan Gibbs-White, Pedro Neto and Benjamin Šeško, while the Copa Pure 4 Elite has found its four assists mostly through defenders, Declan Rice and Josko Gvardiol picking out teammates from deep.
Even the boots lower down the chart have names attached. Gakpo accounts for all three of the Ultra 7's assists, and Under Armour's Shadow Elite and Mizuno's Morelia II both have a single assist on the board, small sample sizes rather than a trend, but proof the bottom of the table isn't just makeweights.
There's clearly more going on here than just goalscorers wearing scoring boots.
Fifty-Five Involvements Is Getting Silly
Combine the two columns and the F50's advantage becomes hard to ignore. Thirty-five goals. Twenty assists. Fifty-five involvements. The Vapor 17 has 37. The Phantom 6 has 18.
The names behind that 55 are what make it interesting. Isak has four. Cherki has five. Semenyo has five. Emersonn has three. Leif Davis has three. Barnes, Ramsey, Mitchell, Stach, Barry and a host of others are adding to the pile.
It isn't one player dragging the F50 into orbit. The whole silo is having a go.
Who's Actually Flying?
The Premier League's speed charts have their own storyline. Bradley Barcola hit 35.93km/h, making him the fastest player in the competition so far. Six minutes after coming off the bench for Liverpool, he decided there was no better way to introduce himself to English football than by briefly becoming a human highlight reel.
The boot? adidas F50. Obviously. That's about as clean a piece of product placement as you could ask for.
Bryan Mbeumo is next at 35.36km/h, with Milan van Ewijk and Pedro Neto both reaching 35.26km/h. Rayan has hit 35.14km/h, while Anthony Elanga also makes the early top ten at 34.86km/h.
The boot spread is a little more varied here. Mbeumo is another F50 wearer, while Neto is in the Superfly 11 and Elanga is wearing the Skechers Razor 2.
Speed clearly doesn't belong to one silo. The F50 just happens to have the quickest player so far.
Nike Has Depth. Adidas Has The Monster Number.
At brand level, the picture gets much closer.
Nike has 77 combined goals and assists to adidas' 74. That's a reflection of Nike's depth across all of its silos. Adidas has fewer productive silos, but the F50 is doing an absurd amount of work.
Nike's spread is impressive. Haaland is scoring in the Phantom 6. Bruno, Palmer, Tavernier, Schade and Calvert-Lewin are producing in the Vapor 17. The Superfly 11 has Morgan Gibbs-White, Pedro Neto and Benjamin Šeško among its contributors. The Tiempo Maestro has Vitaly Janelt, Jack Hinshelwood, Matheus Cunha and Chema Andrés getting involved.
Adidas has the F50 doing the heavy lifting, but the Predator is chipping away through players such as Martin Ødegaard, Pascal Groß and Riccardo Calafiori. The Copa Pure IV has also contributed through Declan Rice and Josko Gvardiol.
PUMA sits third on 16, with Morgan Rogers' three goals and an assist in the Future 9 and Gakpo's four involvements in the Ultra 7 doing most of the talking.
A Couple Of Boots That Refuse To Retire
There's one corner of the data that deserves its own little salute.
The adidas X 19.1 has a goal. The X 19.1. While the boot world has spent the last few years obsessing over increasingly futuristic uppers, carbon plates and increasingly specific speed claims, the X 19.1 has wandered back into the Premier League like it never left.
Jack Clarke has put one in the net wearing it. Fair play.
The Nike Mercurial Vapor 12 has also chipped in with a goal through Joe Willock. It's another little blast from the past in a league increasingly dominated by the latest generation of everything.
Turns out boots don't know they're supposed to be old.
Four Games In, The Boots Have Their Own Story
The early numbers are starting to give us two very different pictures.
At player level, Haaland is setting the pace in the Phantom 6, Isak is right behind him in the F50 and Bruno Fernandes is among the early scorers in the Vapor 17. Cherki, Semenyo, Palmer, Gakpo, Groß and a whole host of others are already making their respective silos count.
At boot level, the F50 is running away with it. Thirty-five goals. Twenty assists. Fifty-five involvements. The fastest player in the league is wearing one too.
Nike isn't far behind. Its numbers are spread across a much wider group of silos, which is why the brand totals are almost neck and neck despite the F50's individual dominance.
Four games is hardly enough to call anything a trend. It is enough, though, to make one thing pretty clear. The Premier League has started. The boots have noticed.
