Figure 1.--Here are the Adidas indoor soccer "Copas" that proved popular in the early 1990s.

A reader tells us that he handled soccer shoes in the early 1990s as the sport was exploding in popularity in the United States. Interestingly the term soccer shoe never became popular. Perhaps this was because soccer was usually played with cleated shoes like football. "I owned and operated a specialty soccer store in California until I sold the store in 1991. The soccer craze started during World Cup in the USA in 1992. Soccer shoes are made by many, mostly European brands like Adidas, Umbro, Lotto, Rebok and then Nike. Besides team sales of soccer uniforms I sold thousands of soccer shorts and soccer indoor shoes for casual dress and school. One of the most popular soccer shoes, both for outdoors and indoors were the Adidas Copa Mundial shoes, called "Copas" (Copa Mundial in Spanish means "World Cup" and these shoes were manufactured for the World Cup games played in Mexico.) The "Copas are kangaroo leather uppers and the outdoors have cleats and the indoor shoes are kangaroo leather uppers and rubber soles. The indoor shoes are a great shoe to wear as a casual and outdoor shoe. The good soccer players will down size their shoes by one or two sizes. If you wear a size 10. you would buy a size 8 shoe. You then would put them on at home and get into the bathtub and let the shoe mold to your foot. Here is a picture of indoor "Copas" (figure 1)."