Supremely Skilled

Designing Phantom GT began with a simple question: How can Nike Football make Phantom players better? On the pitch, these footballers are some of the most dynamic playmakers and skillful athletes at passing, dribbling and shooting. Knowing that, Nike Football designers went forward with engineering the perfect boot for unleashing a player’s natural creativity.

For the first time on a Nike Football boot, generative texture was used on the upper to give players optimal grip on the ball. Based on data from a Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL) study on how the ball interacts with the boot during passing, dribbling, and shooting, generative design experts were able to adjust the placement, density, and angle of the generative texture for helping ball control.

“However Phantom players want to interact with the ball, they’ll feel confident that the ball is going to react exactly how they expect it to,” says Ben Stewart, Global Football Product Line Manager.

That athlete confidence is essential to the design process. Footballers trust their boots to play and perform as intended, so for Phantom GT, an exact science was applied. When building the new Nike Hyperquick System—similar to the process for creating generative texture—there was no guesswork.

Using athlete testing and generative design, the Hyperquick System was tuned to keep footballers on their feet at high speeds. It’s rigid in the right areas for support during quick cuts, and its agility studs are patterned to help create space from defenders.