The Technology Wrapping Adidas Nemesis 19 Cleat, Messi's Feet - Forbes

Lionel Messi will wear the new Adidas Nemesis 19 cleat.

CREDIT: Adidas

When Adidas focused on creating a new agility-driven soccer cleat, designers had the perfect example at their disposal: superstar Lionel Messi. Debuting with a first-use material on the upper, a nod to the past in an updated torsion system and a bold aesthetic befitting the newest silhouette in the line, Adidas offers up the Nemesis 19.

It becomes Messi’s latest cleat, but also an option designed for the multi-directional mover not considered one of the top players in the world.

“Under compression torsion and tension, we unlocked agility,” says Dave Surace, senior director of design for Adidas football (soccer) footwear. “It all starts with materials. It isn’t about drawing a pattern, but we had to get the engineering of materials just right.”

Close-up view of the new material wrapping the Nemesis 19 cleat.

CREDIT: Adidas

At first glance, the Nemesis 19, launching May 7, doesn’t scream material advancement or torsion updating. It offers a progressive silhouette that, as Surace says, “looks a Hell of a lot quicker. Players and consumers want a shape that looks fast. This gives a better anatomical fit. It is sleeker and closer to the foot.”

To get there, Adidas really toyed with compression. A new Agility Skin textile, an enhanced version of what Adidas has used in previous Nemesis models, was developed specifically for Adidas soccer. The elastic material provides plenty of compression, but also allows designers to engineer softness to not completely confine the foot.

Using Tension Tape — essentially bands of material wrapped like a wave structure — the tension provided around the ankle and medial and lateral portions of the foot push the heel back toward the heel counter. “It locks in the heel and then the toes can do what you need them to do,” Surace says. “The shape pulls your heel back into the shoe, seat belting you into the heel counter.”

A softer compression near the v-shaped collar allows for easier entry into the laceless design — the P0 mid-top version comes more dramatic aesthetically with the laceless design, while the low-top P1 option, which Messi prefers, uses the same construction but with laces added — as designers engineered flex to create softness and rigidness throughout the upper material.

Lionel Messi and the new Adidas Nemesis 19 cleat.

CREDIT: Adidas

Along with the compression, the Agility Skin includes the ability to stop the weather from penetrating the textile, helps limit abrasion and has memory in the stretch for continued lockdown durability, Surace says.

Working in conjunction with the tension bands, designers embraced the split tooling of the traction plate, seen originally in the 1990s. With the heel and forefoot moving independently a torsion bar acting like a spine connects them, allowing for multi-directional movement. “The upper material and tension bar directly effect each other,” Surace says. “it is not a linear process.”

This tuning of materials and systems together called for over two years of creation and countless iterations — the upper material was getting tweaked by half a millimeter at a time — during a fresh approach to design that required the team to build, test, fail and do it all over again.

American soccer player Weston McKennie enjoys the "comfort" provided from the new Adidas Nemesis 19 technology.

CREDIT: Adidas

Weston McKennie, American National Team member and member of Germany’s Schalke of the Bundesliga, says the most important thing for him in a cleat is comfortability. For the Nemesis 19, he enjoys the way it wraps the foot. “It makes it a lot more comfortable than the other shoes I have had in the past,” he says, crediting the security he gets from the tension tape and the touch he feels on the ball with no laces.

Surace and Adidas tout the benefits of the performance, but they also note the potential for the Nemesis 19 to really take on its own personality. And it already has, with the debut red colorway with chrome accents pairing with the laceless banding design for a stark change in soccer aesthetics.

“This is loud,” Surace says, “but it would be pretty easy to turn it into a peacock. We could swap parts, play with chords, change the look pretty easy.”

Throughout the process, the new Nemesis 19 gives Adidas a materials-driven design aimed at creating a progressive approach to the soccer pitch.

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