Studs Up

I just posted a massive amount of photos to my Nike Elite Series Photo Review on the Studs Up Facebook page. Nike was nice enough to send me all four silos from the family, the Superfly 2, Total90, CTR360 and Tiempo and I’ll be posting a full review of each of them in the coming weeks after I can get some matches and practice under my belt. Expect plenty of pics and, fingers crossed, moments of glory as my league heads into its final stretch for the cup title. I’ll also be giving their Nike Football Plus platform a real run out to see if there’s potential to be as successful as the original Nike Plus running platform was/is.

If you’re at all a football boot afficiendo, you’ll want to check it out. The Nike Elite Series always intrigued me because it represented the creation of a “Prosumer” amateur footballer, no longer were we being treated like we were all fat blokes playing in a pub league but rather acknowledging the existence of players who aspired to be as good as they possibly could be. This means practice, this means winning (amateur) trophies and this means having the best possible gear available to them.

What’s that you say? No boot is worth the USD300/GBP200 that Nike is asking for the Elite Level boot? Would you wear them if someone gave you a pair? Of course you would and that’s the correct question to ask, any item at the top of a product chain is going to price out a large number of potential customers. The real question is whether the boot is indeed superior to the rest of those in the market. If it is, then the price – no matter how high – can be whatever the heck it wants because its the best out there. There are plenty of other options if for those who won’t or can’t afford it. Think luxury cars, or jewelry.

The Prosumer concept is nothing new to tech geeks, with dads and tourists from the world over picking up Digital SLRs priced at thousands of dollars just to snap the family dog, or their kids pretending to hold up the Eiffel tower.

The Elite Series is Nike’s version of that. The combination of world class materials and research to put a professional-level boot complete with carbon fibre soleplates, special synthetic materials like Teijin Microfiber in the upper, flywire cable technology, into the hands of the amateur player. Theoretically, the only thing now separating the pros and us is a custom-molded fit to our foot. Oh and a lot of footballing talent. And money. And women. God dammit.

Anyway… delusions aside the Nike Elite Series is already creating a lot of interest. I stopped by my local Nike Town to ask the sales rep how these USD300/GBP200 boots were selling and apparently they were already sold out of a number of sizes in most of the boots. Interestingly, the World Cup version has a unique metallic purple colour with bright orange heel, there’s no way you’ve missed it on TV during the World Cup and that’s the intent as well as making you much more conspicuous on the field. The activation of peripheral vision is the reason that heel is bright orange, and in the first few matches I’ve played with the Superfly II my teammates have already remarked just how much I stick out for them to pick a pass. Marketing and Reality in a perfect mix.

But what’s interesting is that with some of the new Elite colourways that are already being released ahead of the new season, the eye-popping heel appears to be missing. An example is the upcoming White/Red Nike Tiempo Elite . The heel colour was one of those elements of advanced boot design that you could really put your finger on and say “That is making a huge difference”, so it was interesting to see it missing from some of the new colours.

Regardless, I’ll have loads more info on them in the coming weeks. I’m a boothead, and the creation of the prosumer level boot is the most exciting boot trend I think I’ve seen in my lifetime. Hopefully Nike will continue to push the envelope and other brands will step up and give us the level of boot the amateur game now deserves.

But for now, I’ll be spending a few weeks like a kid in a candy store and keep an eye out for my reviews of the four boots in the Nike Elite Series family.