Nike unveiled the Mercurial Superfly and Mercurial Vapor 360
The new Nike silo revolutionize an icon of the game, taking the football boot to new levels of technology
Sports
February 8th, 2018
February 8th, 2018
The wait is finally over, as yesterday night, during an event in London that offered a massive amount of news, Nike Football finally presented the new Mercurial Superfly and Mercurial Vapor 360, the latest version of the boot that wrote the history of football. The silo unveiled by Nike represents the umpteenth revolution of fabrics and designs applied to a football boot, that can now be considered as the highest technological product for a professional footballer.
In the first place, the new Mercurial design is based on fit, that according to the Swoosh is the base for an unmatchable speed. Thanks to the innovations with the Flyknit technology, Mercurial Superfly and Mercurial Vapor are realized with the revolutionary 360 construction, that completely wraps the foot. This is thanks to the removal of the soleplate, with the sockliner that bonds directly with the new internal chassis, made via computational programming for the maximum responsiveness.
The sole has also radically changed, with the goal to achieve maximum traction with the pitch. Nike calls the new minimalistic approach “the cheetah paw”, with studs strategically placed on the forefoot and the heel. “The aggressive forefoot is built for acceleration in any direction while the heel studs help the player stop on a dime,” explains Jeongwoo Lee, Nike Football Senior Design Director. The footballers were impressed with this new solution and the report the sensation that the boot just disappears in the way it syncs with the foot.
There have been new solutions also for the upper, which softness on the new Mercurial 360 can be assigned to the improvement with the ACC technology (All Conditions Control). Previously, ACC was applied on top of the finished Flyknit product, creating a thin layer. Now, ACC is embedded into the yarns prior to knitting, eliminating the additional skin without compromising the performance benefit. Finally, for the aesthetic Nike chose a minimalistic and clean approach, with a small Swoosh in the front and an “M” on the heel. The Dynamic Fit Collar takes on a lower cuff, similar to the modified version Ronaldo has preferred in recent seasons.
