A sticky coating for ultimate ball control was sourced, appropriately, from the chassis of racing motorcycles and was honed to work with the shoe’s unique upper.

Thinner and lighter than traditional leather, KNG-100 shattered the stigma of synthetic football boots and changed how football footwear was made. The KNG-100 synthetic upper (which behaved like leather but didn’t absorb water like natural fabrics) further trimmed weight. A thinner plate, built to withstand the impact of 90 minutes of high-speed play, reduced weight. In tune with the phenomenal Brazilian striker’s insights, the Mercurial was engineered for speed. Engineered with Ronaldo’s startling velocity in mind, what started out as a lightweight addition to the Tiempo series accelerated past anything made before and forged its own path as a “speed” boot: the Mercurial. How can a track spike inform a football boot? Initially known as Tiempo Ultra Light, and the Ronaldo Ultra Speed, the Nike Mercurial answered that question. Nike launched the Mercurial silo in 1998, forever changing the look and feel of performance football boots. The look, the materials, people didn’t know what to think. Luca Bolpagni, from Nike’s Product Creation Centre in Montebelluna, Italy said of the innovations, “Everything was shocking at the time. The second major breakthrough was reducing plate thickness from the industry standard 3 mm to a game-changing 1.75 mm. To meet the challenge, the team of designers bucked longstanding trends by eschewing kangaroo leather and employing a synthetic kangaroo replacement, KNG-100. Early concepts included a disassembled track spike married to a Nike Tiempo upper, which illustrated the objective of unmatched weight reduction in a football boot. To craft a football boot suited to Ronaldo’s explosive style, Nike designers looked to the track. An incredible talent with power, pace, skill and a predatory eye for goal. Ronaldo, Brazil’s young striker, was the muse. They turned to the best player in the world at the time, Ronaldo. Nike needed something different, something marketable, some way of carving out their own identity in football boots. With Brazil’s kit deal in the bag Nike needed to add a football boot that could compete with the best. Adidas had the Predator, launched in 1994 with its rubber fins to swerve the ball, it was the boot to have. At the time this was a significant statement of intent Nike were committed to the world’s most popular sport.

In 1996, Nike opened a 10 year partnership with the world’s most decorated international side, the Brazilian national football squad.

Nike mercurial superfly