Nike Launch Magista 2 : Football Boots : Soccer Bible

In 2014 Nike rewrote the rules of football boot design with the Magista. The introduction of a collared football boot has formed a legacy across the market and the Magista series has transformed the dynamic of the humble football boot. Over two years on and the Magista has evolved. The next-generation has landed, this is Magista 2.

In that time since the launch of the first Magista Nike have advanced their scientific testing and rapid prototyping to enable them to emphasise evolution in touch and traction. The Magista 2 isn't an advanced version of the first-generation as such, more a restyled concept that targets ultimate control of the ball with each area of the boot created for a certain and specific purpose.



“After reading research around evolution and morphology,” explains Nike football designer Phil Woodman. “I was interested in the hypothesis that pruning hands were an evolutionary development for maintaining grip on wet surfaces and tools. That got me thinking about how the foot might have adapted had its primary purpose been football.”

Accordingly, for the Nike Magista 2, Woodman reimagined the original Magista silhouette. “We were focused on sensory amplification through feel,” says Woodman. The Nike Sports Research Lab helped to define which parts of the foot are most sensitive to touch and mapped those against high-touch zones gleaned from slow-motion film study of ball control. The data collected in this research was visually applied to a foot model in the form of a heat map, a concept that inspired the visual graphic of the new Magista 2. 



A 3D printed test upper features peaks and troughs of varying dimensions. This was a marked transition from the upper of the original Magista, which was uniform throughout. The texture is podular and cushioned, designed to communicate with a player’s sense of touch when the ball comes in contact with it, with the highest peaks (4.5mm) in the premium touch areas, aligned with where the foot should come in contact with the ball.

Another noticeable evolution on the Nike Magista 2 is the more anatomically contoured Dynamic Fit Collar, designed to accommodate the shape of the ankle bone while leveraging a thicker knit structure for additional coverage. The revamped collar also dips lower on the tendon for comfort and the tongue-less solution now features light padding under the laces for coverage in this high contact area.



An internal heel counter creates an improved locked down fit and the Nike Grip sockliner further enhances in-boot stability. The stud configuration of the soleplate has been completely revamped through Finite Element Analysis (FEA), which takes the guesswork out of traction patterns via scientific testing. The key to the new traction pattern is not how a particular stud performs individually, but how the configuration interacts as a complete system. The soleplate housing the advanced traction system is significantly lighter than its predecessor: 60g as opposed to 85g.

Want a pair? Pick them up here from July 26.