Introducing the Nike Seitrio Hi-Vis ball, which builds on the legacy of excellence in the T90 football range that has served as the official match ball in the world’s leading leagues including Barclay’s English Premier League, Italy’s Serie A and Spain’s La Liga. Continuing to bring new innovations to football, the Hi-Vis ball features Nike RaDaR technology, which means Rapid Decision and Response.

Nike has tested the ball in the lab and on the field and the result is the Nike RaDaR technology, which makes it easier for players to see the ball better and capitalize on split second scoring and passing opportunities. In the game of football, precision sight is of utmost importance, and the Nike Seitiro is engineered to stand out on pitch even when conditions are not ideal. The yellow and purple color combination flaunts additional fluorescence and brighteners, making it even more visible in low light conditions than previous generations of Hi-Vis balls.

The Nike Seitiro features patented hi-vis casing, performance graphic, and unique five-layer construction, along with aerodynamic stability. The new ball saw its official debut on the pitch this past weekend. Chances are we’ll be seeing a lot more of it.

Nike Seitiro Premier League Hi-Vis at The Nike Store

Nike just released its Nike T90 Laser IV soccer shoe. The “football” shoe is 20 percent lighter than the previous version. It features a streamlined silhouette that provides enhanced fit and lets wearers feel the ball. The forefoot area has a newly configured adaptive shield design that works with the foot’s natural motion to boost performance. Constructed from high performance synthetic leather, the upper provides a soft and close-to-the-foot fit. On the sole, a new stud design enhances speed and movement, without added weight or pressure.

To coincide with the launch, Nike Football created the T90 Strike Counter on Facebook. This app allows users to log their goals, and recreate the action in a 3D image. Report the spot on the pitch from where a goal was scored; where in the goal the ball went, and what part of the boot (shoe) was struck the ball. The data render a 3D image that can be shared with friends. Participants can also check out the 3D image and input from pro football players.

Nike T90 Laswer IV Football Shoe Official Website

This is no doubt a concern for the 2022 World Cup games that will be played in Qatar, where extreme summer heat is something that can’t be easily beat(en). The solution, according to The Daily Mail is a cloud. We’ve heard of the digital cloud – as in online hosting of digital data – but this is actually an artificial cloud. And least you fear that this is some of gaseous creation, it is actually lightweight carbon structures carrying a giant envelope of material containing helium gas. In other words, large balloon like objects. So maybe a retractable roof would be the better idea?

However, because of the region has so much sun, organizers are looking to power the artificial clouds via solar power, as well as the air conditioning in the stadium. Hopefully as this will let spectators beat the heat.

[Via The Daily Mail: Pie in the sky! Qatar invents artificial clouds to beat the heat at 2022 World Cup]

Imagine you’re on the soccer field, and go for the ball, but the cleats on your shoes are just a hair short for the muddy surface and you slip. The opposing team gets the ball and scores the winning point of the game. Get the a pair of Nike CR Mercural Vapor SuperFly IIs and you’ll have an extra 3mm on the adaptive studs depending on the ground conditions and pressure exerted by the player. The adaptive traction system can extend or retract by those 3 mm, possibly saving the field and maybe even the shoes from undue wear when not needed.

Blades are positioned directionally on the forefoot to maximize cutting and allow for quick changes in direction. Secondary toe traction provides added toe-off power to get you started on that sprint during a play.The new pair of Nike shoes with an ostrich skin print designed originally in 1987 for the Air Safari running shoe is the shoe of choice for soccer player Christiano Ronaldo. That would be the “CR” in the name of the shoe.

The shoe uses Nike Flywire materials and construction. That’s a lightweight composite that forms the upper and increases range of motion while locking the foot to the sole plate, and ensures maximum transfer of energy from the foot to the ground. A carbon composite chassis keeps the player close to the ground, improving stability and responsiveness.

Nike Soccer

There’s a group that plays soccer in the North end of Central Park in New York City. They play until the grass wears bare, and there’s nothing left of the field except hard-packed dirt. We’ve wondered why they wear the field down to dirt, but it turns out they’re probably playing a variation of their favorite football, Sala. There’s three variations on football popular in Europe, Central America and North America. Those are cage, caneta and sala. Nike just introduced a collection of Nike5 shoes addressing each sport.Cage is a game played on artificial surfaces both indoor and outdoor. The Nike5 Bomba Finale was designed for players of this game. The shoes feature:

• Shape correction Shot Shield advances true low-trajectory striking.
• CTR360 inspired in-step area enhances touch for fast distribution.
• Protective rubberized screen provides durability and strength in high-impact zone.
• Evolved forefront AG TPU traction technology increases toe acceleration and plant foot stability.
• New rubber turf pattern provides underfoot ball control and stability.

Caneta is played mostly on indoor courts and for this surface and gameplay the Nike5 Elastico Finale was designed. The shoes properties include:

• Outsole technology enhances underfoot ball control in all directions.
• Full transition lightweight outsole increases 360 degree ball control while enhancing touch for quick distribution.
• Anatomically controured barefoot construction provides a lightweight fit.
• Forefoot debossed dots work with the Kanga-Lite synthetic leather upper to provide a soft touch, while amplifying touch under more impact.

The Nike 5 LunarGato was designed for sala, which is played on hard surfaces such as dirt and hard courts. This shoe is perfect for the players in Central Park that have made their home field one of packed dirt:

• Lunarlon platform technology, tuned specifically for the small sided game, maximizes balance stability, support and cushioning.
• New Gum Rubber outsole design provides traction, flexibility and underfoot ball control.
• Forefront leather upper cushions ball impact enhancing touch and control.
• Seamless no-sew system increases comfort and flexibility.
• Protective rummerized screen provides durability and strength in high-impact zones.

While it’s all soccer, these games are quite different and require different support and structure for shoes. In addition to the technology, the shoes look good and will likely be seen  on the streets, which makes it all the more easy for pick-up games.

Nike football (soccer) website.

As football season starts here in America, it’s still worth thinking about the sport the rest of the world calls football, what we call Soccer in the U.S. Just in time for fall ‘futball’ Nike introduced its Total 90 Tracer ball. The new ball is designed for consistency, accuracy, touch and visual acuity. The ball has hand-sewn seams, improved bladder tension and the surface texture you expect to kick around the field. The surface texture is actually a micro-textured casing, which regulates airflow equally across the ball’s entire surface. The ball is then less prone to wobble, and takes a more direct, arrow-like flight.Nike tested the ball among many of the prominent leagues including the Barclays Premier League, Spain’s LFP, Italy’s Serie A, national teams including Portugal and the United States, and confederation matches throughout South America and Asia. The company also tested the T90 Tracer Ball at the Nike Equipment Innovation Test Lab in Oregon. Nike claims the ball works well with the beginner player, amateur leagues and pro-soccer (or football) teams.

This isn’t the first new soccer ball to hit the field in a while. Adidas introduced a new ball, the World Cup Jabulani Ball, early in the summer before the World Cup. The question will be whether the new design and features will be adopted by teams and leagues, and whether the ball will filter down into schools an kid’s teams. The pricing may be a factor as much as playability for the latter. Nike has a large presence among teams worldwide, and introduced new uniforms for World Cup, which could supply an in for the new T90 Tracer Ball.

Research shows men kick the soccer ball differently than women. The study, published this month in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, finds males activate certain hip and leg muscles more than females during the most common soccer kicks – the instep and side-foot kicks. While men activate more muscles, the data may explain why female players are twice as likely as male players to sustain anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury.

“By analyzing the detailed motion of a soccer kick in progress, our goal was to home in on some of the differences between the sexes and how they may relate to injury risk,” said orthopaedic surgeon Robert H. Brophy, MD, the study author and assistant professor of orthopedics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.To conduct the study Dr. Brophy and colleagues from Motion Analysis Laboratory and Sports Medicine Service at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York used 3D video-based motion analysis and electromyography to examine the differences between 13 male and 12 female college soccer players. The researchers used eight to 10 video cameras, 21 retroreflective markers and 16 electrodes simultaneously to measure the activation of seven muscles. Those were iliacus, gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, hamstring, and gastrocnemius. Movement was measured both in the kicking and supporting legs. The hip abductors and tibialis anterior muscles were also studied in the kicking leg.

The conclusion is that male players activate the hip flexors, muscles inside the hip, in their kicking leg, and hip abductors on the outside of the hip in the supporting leg during a kick. In the kicking leg, men generated almost four times as much hip flexor activation as females. In the supporting leg male subjects generated more than twice as much gluteus medius activation and vastus medialis activation as female participants.

The findings may explain a higher proportion of injuries in female soccer players over male. Research can also work towards better equipment and prevention of such injuries.

How many calls came into question during the recent World Cup competition in South Africa? In just about every competitive sport, referees must call who crossed the line first, or if the ball was inside or outside of a line. Many sports have addressed the issue. Tennis uses a Hawk-Eye technology that films and replays the ball play in question. Cycling uses cameras on the finish line and transponders on each bike. Football draws a digital line in the replay to measure the ball and distance it’s traveled. More technology is on the way.

German-based company Cairos Technologies is in talks to introduce its chip-in-ball technology to firm up the calls of in or out. A micro-chip inside say a football or soccer ball would clear up any question to a referee’s judgment that happens now. Cairos showed its reportedly was rejected by the International Football Association Board, which consults with FIFA on rules and regulations of the sport. The company is said to be in talks with the NFL to insert chips in footballs to aid judgment. Not many details are available on the Cairos Web site.

Cairos Technologies Web site

[via: Fast Company and ESPN]

Hawkins isn’t new to the world of sports either, and he previously developed the ball-tracking device used in cricket, snooker and tennis, and is pushing for similar technology to be used in football/soccer. The system includes six cameras facing the goal from different angles to track the ball, where a signal is transmitted via a bank of computers to a referee with half a second of the ball crossing the line. Given some of the disputed calls during the World Cup, this could make a huge difference.

However, not all are in embracing the idea. It has been noted that many English Premier League matches are carried by Sky TV, which has eight cameras on the field, so a simple replay should often be enough to determine a call. But the real question is whether you can ever really have enough eyes – Hawk – or otherwise watching the action?

Hawk-Eye Sensors Official Site

adidas World Cup Jabulani Ball

This week the California Institute of Technology gave new meaning to the concept of “air ball” as aerospace engineers at the prestigious school put the controversial new “Jabulani” football (that’s soccer to most of us Americans) to the test in a wind tunnel. The ball, which was developed by adidas, is currently being used in the World Cup, where players, coaches and fans have blamed it for missed shots. So much for blaming bad play?

According to reports two balls were put into the Lucas Wind Tunnel and exposed to wind speeds of about 10 meters per second, which is actually slower than a typical kicked ball. To determine the movement of air around said balls, a smoke machine was called in. This helped the engineers visualize the air movement. The findings actually matched some complaints from teams in the World Cup. The ball reportedly had some “bizarre trajectories.”

 Developed by the adidas Innovation Team (a.i.t.), the ball has been tested as new “match ball” for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. This mean tests under the toughest laboratory conditions, but it isn’t clear if this is in fact the first time the ball went into a wind tunnel. At this point it doesn’t look as if the ball will pulled, but with more studies coming dare we say that the wind of change is blowing through.

Adiddas World Cup  Jabulani Ball at Amazon.com

[Via Reuters: Geeks give new Cup ball a wind tunnel workout]

These players are kicking on a hybrid natural grass and artificial turf.

Field caretakers at this year’s World Cup may get a break from patching grass at this tournament. The fields are sewn with reinforced natural grass produced by Belgian-based company Desso Sports Systems. An article appearing in USAToday details “a surface with 20 million threads of synthetic grass fibers woven in between and beneath the natural grass.” The surface is far from Astroturf of yesterday. Natural grass composes most of the playing field, but is reinforced with artificial threads driven eight inches into the surface and intertwined with the roots of the real grass to keep the field intact for the long series of soccer games to be played.

The enhanced surface is already installed in a number of fields worldwide. For soccer, or football as the rest of the world calls it, Arsenal and Liverpool in the U.K. and the training grounds of Real Madrid. For American football, the Denver Broncos and the Philadelphia Eagles already use the reinforced natural grass.

Desso Sports Systems and its English language site ArtificialGrass.info.

The heart rate monitor and GPS device is no longer personal for world football players. Australia’s World Cup players are picking up data via satellite for each player’s workout. Teams get competitive data on their own performance, and their competitors, according to “Socceroos go high-tech to gain an edge over rest of the world,” an article published in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Players down under were able to compare their training to that of their Russian counterparts. Team coaches also use the data to provide support for their players. “We’re analyzing the players’ volumes of sweat and composition so we can accurately predict how much fluid they’ll lose during a game and at training,” Australia’s strength and conditioning coach Darren Burgess told the paper. “We want to have a rehydration strategy for each player.”

It will be interesting to see what other teams and leagues pick up this method of training. Will it lead to real-time data access to personal workouts instead of uploading details upon return from a run?

Nike makes team uniforms from recycled plastic bottles.

The recent trend in sports and fitness clothing is green, sustainability. Nike is part of this trend and especially when it comes to football (that’s soccer to many of you), and the upcoming 2010 World Cup in South Africa. This year Nike is outfitting the Brazil team with home and away kits, plus eight away kits for other Nike-sponsored federations appearing in the games. What’s so sustainable about these kits or outfits you ask? Nike’s fabric suppliers sourced plastic bottles from landfill sites in Japan and Taiwan to produce the jerseys and shorts.

Eight plastic bottles produce one jersey. To turn bottle into soft, breathable fabric bottles the manufacturer melts the plastics down to produce new yarn and then convert that yarn into fabric to construct jerseys. Just because the jerseys are made from plastic doesn’t mean players will drown in their own sweat. Designed to keep players drier, cooler, and more comfortable, the outfit has a handful of features. The Dri-Fit fabric is 15 percent lighter than previous Nike kit fabrications, which also benefits players’ ability to do their stuff out on the field. The coordinating shorts have additional ventilation zones below the waistband and near the base of the spine to keep the outfit breathable.

The outfits have some protection built in as well. Nike Pro Combat, adds protection against light impact and abrasion in the Slider and Impact shorts. The Pro Combat also features a therma Mock that protects a player’s neck against harsh conditions such as sun.

The process saves raw materials and reduces energy consumption by up to 30 percent compared to the manufacture of virgin polyester. For the upcoming season and competition, Nike salvaged roughly 13 million plastic bottles, totaling around 254,000 kg of polyester waste from landfill sites. That’s enough to stretch a distance of 3,000 kilometers if the bottles are laid out end-to-end.

The games take place in South Africa with teams from Brazil, The Netherlands, Portugal, U.S.A., South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, and Slovenia. Get your own team kits at nike.com and nikefootball.com.

Check out Nike’s video: Nike Introduces 2010 National Team Kits Designed for Increased Performance with Lower Environmental Impact