Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Adidas Unveils Adizero F50 “Smart” Football Boot

Adidas, a sporting goods and apparel company that is world-renown, especially for it’s soccer products, has revolutionized the basic soccer cleat into a shoe with a brain. Lionel Messi, regarded by many as undoubtedly the best soccer player on the planet, has teamed up with Adidas to create this legendary new shoe, and based on Messi’s tremendous success on the field, Adidas hopes he can spread the popularity of the new boot. Darren Quick explains, “The ‘brain’ of the adizero f50 [name of boot] is a miCoach SPEED_CELL that is located in a cavity in the sole of the boot that captures 360-degree movement and metrics such as speed, average speed (recorded every second), maximum speed (recorded every five seconds), the number of sprints, distance, distance at high intensity levels, steps and step length.” This invention is not only revolutionary, but extremely helpful as well. As a soccer player myself, I would love to know how much I run during a 90-minute match and how much of that running is sprinting or jogging. Matt Lawless, in his article The Boot With A Brain: Messi Is The Mastermind Behind Football’s Next Step Into The Future, tells us that the boot “transmit[s] on-pitch information to tablets, PCs and Macs using a wireless link.” The chip in the sole of the shoe can record up to 7 hours of movement at a time. Seven hours is about the amount of total time in a week’s practice between weekend games for our Men’s soccer team, so if everyone were to use these cleats in our practices, then our coaches and players could gauge their progress and compare themselves with other players. This could be helpful for coaches to construct gameplans and lineups during the week before a game. In Lawless’ article, Markus Baumann, the Adidas Vice President of Global Football, further enhances my thoughts when he says, “What makes the boot unique is that for the first time you will be able to compare yourself to some of the best players in the world.” Just that in itself is exciting for any young, up-and-coming soccer player. In Radu Tyrsina’s article Adidas unveils the smart football boot with a brain, he provides a quote from Simon Drabble, Adidas’ Director of Interactive Technology, in which he says, “Adidas will now bring this service to consumer, firstly with the launch of adizero f50, and then through a further range of intelligent products capable of storing, monitoring and evaluating performance on the field of play.” This is extremely exciting news for all athletes because it will not only be soccer players who get to compare themselves to professional athletes in the very near future. Adidas’ use of advancing technology is incredible and helpful.


SOURCES:

http://www.gizmag.com/adidas-adizero-f50-football-boot/20030/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2042549/Lionel-Messi-unveils-adidas-f50-miCoach-football-boot.html

http://www.mobilemag.com/2011/10/05/adidas-unveils-the-smart-football-boot/

1 comment:

  1. Although this innovation is called a revolutionary device it was not the first of its kind. Yes this device can help you on the field and off the field with your work out but a competitor actually beat Adidas to the punch. Nike teamed up with Apple years ago to create Nike+ which does basically the same thing as the Adidas new system. It kept track of how long you ran and and how fast and other data that helped improve your work out. This new putting chips into clothing has become a new phenomenon also with Underarmour that created a shirt with a chip in it for football. they debuted this at the NFL combine this year. It does the same thing as the Adidas or nike counterpart but instead of being in a shoe to keep track of running it keeps track of other data that improves your work out. Eventually in the future your clothing will be your personal trainer and the need for actually trainers won't be necessary.

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