When Nike Football launched Nike5, a little lightbulb went on in my head. “Finally!” I said, almost certainly to no one in particular. Football gear has long been dominated by football boots, largely because they sell well but also largely because they’re marketable. The players in the games millions of people watch on TV wear football boots, not turfs or indoors. To not take advantage of that would be madness.
But the truth is many amateur players don’t get to play their football on lush, grass pitches, and spend the majority, if not all, of their time on the streets, caged hard court or turf mini-pitches, or indoor gymnasiums. Growing up in Hong Kong, I would spend 3-4 hours a day during school playing football either on the concrete, gravel playground my school had graciously painted green, or on the cricket nets the school had also graciously installed on the roof of our buildings up 20 or so flights of stairs. The game most of us play is not the one we see on TV and football shoes, not boots, were what we fawned over and saved up for. To show up to school with a new pair of turfs was to make as statement of intent.
Yet, I’ve long been annoyed with the astroturf or indoor shoe offering. Usually it’s having to pick between incredibly old, unstylish models and the newer ones which look like someone took a cheap version of a particular boot, tore off the bottom, and stuck a rubber sole on it. This usually murders the whole look of both the original boot and the shoe it had now become. There was also something weird about wearing a shoe that looked like a boot, but wasn’t. It’s like taking a Mercedes hood ornament and sticking it onto a bicycle. Actually, that would be kinda awesome. Bad example.
And so enters Nike5, launched specifically to produce gear catered to those who either exclusively or frequently play their football off-grass, and with our style and functionality needs in mind. Yes please.
The latest offering is split into three models with three purposes in mind, the Nike5 Bomba Finale (cage), Nike5 LunarGato (sala) and Nike5 Elastico Finale (caneta). Cage means the shoe is designed for artificial surfaces like astro turf, Sala means the shoe is designed for hard court or dirt surfaces, while Cantera is primarily intended for indoor use.
It’s the first two, the Bomba Finale and LunarGato, that I’ll be reviewing for Inside The Bootroom. Stay tuned.
