Nike

It’s here: the long-awaited, game-changing PhantomVSN (Phantom Vision) cleat from Nike. This is the cleat that the likes of Philippe Coutinho, Kevin De Bruyne and Mallory Pugh — attackers “at ease in a position-less environment” — will be using to navigate tight spaces and open up games. These boots are designed with the next generation of playmakers in mind, and it’s quickly apparent that the wears associated with attacking football will never be the same. 

For me, the life cycle of your relationship with fashion goes something like this: When you’re young, you wear whatever is singularly most pleasing to yourself (train shirt, train pants, train socks, BOOM). You then enter a more fashionable phase wherein you still only rely on your own sense of what’s cool (this is when you get your first track suit). 

If you’re like me, a Nike-head who refuses to wear cleats that aren’t primarily black or white, you’re gonna love this. Today, Nike unveiled its range of cleats (Mercurial, Hypervenom, Tiempo, Magista) for the 2018 World Cup, called the “Just Do It” pack. They’ll be available to the public on May 14, and they’re exceptionally clean. 

When the World Cup rolls around, new kits are being released, new cleat models are coming out and even board shorts for countries makes an appearance. You obviously know about the kits for each country, but what you didn’t know is that there has been a ton of awesome new World Cup gear released over the past few weeks and months in the lead up to the tournament.