Nike
Nike has been making football boots since 1971, but it was the 1994 Tiempo Premier and, above all, the 1998 Mercurial worn by Ronaldo Nazário that turned the brand into a force on the pitch. Nike's approach has always been to build boots around a specific way of playing rather than a single universal last: Mercurial for pure speed, Phantom for touch and control, Tiempo for classic leather feel. Innovations like Flyknit uppers, Vaporposite textures, Zoom Air units in the forefoot and Cyclone 360 traction plates have come out of that same philosophy of engineering the boot around the player.
