Cavan Sullivan Wears First Fully 3D-Printed Football Boot in a Professional MLS Match

The Debut

On July 23, 2026, 16-year-old Philadelphia Union midfielder Cavan Sullivan stepped onto the pitch for an MLS match against the New York Red Bulls wearing something no professional footballer has worn before: a fully 3D-printed boot. Adidas calls the project R.A.P., which stands for Radical Athlete Perception. Sullivan is the first player to take it into a competitive match.

The boot is part of Adidas' broader effort to move beyond standard sizing. Project R.A.P. generates footwear from individual athlete data rather than starting with a generic last and modifying it. That is a meaningful shift. Most 3D-printed shoes released to date have still been built around a standard shape. Project R.A.P. starts with the athlete and works backward.

What Makes It Different

The R.A.P. football boot features a fully 3D-printed lattice upper. Adidas describes the structure as highly porous and breathable. The lattice design also lets the company tune stiffness and support in specific zones without adding separate materials. That means one manufacturing step produces a midsole, an upper, and a structural shell all at once.

Adidas developed the boot with input from Paris Saint-Germain's Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Atletico Madrid's Ademola Lookman. Both players were involved in fit testing and design feedback. Lookman was spotted wearing a prototype during training before Sullivan's match debut.

The R.A.P. platform actually started with basketball, not football. Adidas released the BB.01 3D-printed basketball shoe in a limited run of 169 pairs earlier in 2026. Fifty pairs sold at the Adidas Las Vegas flagship store, 89 went through the Adidas CONFIRMED app at $250 each, and 30 were allocated to Greater China. The BB.01 uses the same lattice-printing approach and debuted on NBA Summer League athlete Mikel Brown Jr.

Is It Available to Buy

Not yet. Adidas has not announced a retail release for the football boot. The company says more Project R.A.P. announcements will come over the next few months. For now, the boot is a development and innovation concept, not a product you can walk into a store and buy.

Context

Adidas is not alone in pursuing athlete-specific 3D-printed footwear. German startup HEZO uses a smartphone app to capture roughly 1,000 data points per foot and prints each cycling shoe individually to order. Actble and Something Added recently 3D printed a ballet pointe shoe designed to last five times longer than a conventional pair. The pointe shoe splits into a 3D-printed inner sole, a compression-fit knitted skin, and replaceable laces so a dancer can swap the most worn part without rebuilding the whole shoe.

The common thread is customization at scale. 3D printing removes the cost penalty for making something that fits a single person perfectly. For high-performance athletes, that fit translates directly to comfort, control, and reduced injury risk.

What It Means for 3D Printing

A 3D-printed boot appearing in a live professional football match is a visibility milestone for additive manufacturing in consumer sports. The boot is not a prototype or a training session gimmick. It was worn in a game with result-level stakes. That kind of public proof-of-concept tends to accelerate investment in the underlying technology.

The Adidas BB.01 basketball shoe proved the manufacturing process could work at small scale. The football boot proves it can hold up to the physical demands of professional sport. If Adidas scales Project R.A.P. to retail, the lattice-printing approach could end up in thousands of shoes rather than a few dozen prototypes.