Nike

Goalkeepers hating new footballs is a tradition unlike any other, so prepare for an outpouring of grief come the start of the 2020-21 Premier League season as Nike debuts its new Flight ball. 

According to the geezers inside the Nike Lab, the Flight ball utilizes four panel construction — as opposed to the traditional 12-panel ball — which helps create a 30% truer flight than its predecessor (the Merlin).

When your internal calendar is largely synced with the footballing one, it’s difficult to wrap your head around the fact that we’re now approaching mid-June. In the fantasy world before COVID-19, we’d see Euro 2020 begin on Friday; in the actual COVID-19 world, we’ll see the Premier League return Wednesday with a pair of fixtures that were originally scheduled for March 11.

WARNING: Classic Football Shirts is really fun to browse but you will go broke. 

Before Puma decided that when it came to Per Mertesacker’s body, nothing should be left to the imagination, jerseys were essentially built for quarantine. Forsaking the modern urban fit for that of a parachute, these were shirts that you could grow into for years and years and years — perfect for the figure you’ve achieved over the last two months.  

Back in early February, Nike unveiled new jerseys for South Korea as the Taegeuk Warriors looked forward to World Cup qualifying matches against Turkmenistan, Sri Lanka, Lebanon and North Korea. All of those games have since been postponed, but Nike’s jaw-dropping approach continues with the unveiling of the Mercurial “South Korea” cleats.

If you’re looking for new cleats this spring but not interested in dropping $250 on the latest QuIcK tEcH hYpEr SkIn lAzEr DuSt gOd mOdE boots, let us gently point you towards the latest drop from Nike’s Premier II cleat line: the more traditionally named “White/Black/White” color way. 

The 2020 Chinese Super League season was supposed to begin on Feb. 22 but was indefinitely postponed back in January because of the coronavirus outbreak. More recently, there’d been speculation that the new season could start in the coming weeks after locally transmitted cases reached zero, but the country could now face a second wave of the pandemic from people entering China from abroad.

The latest drop from Nike ahead of returning to the pitch this spring is the Phantom VNM Future DNA T90 cleat, which pays homage to the iconic Total 90 II boots that were made famous by Wayne Rooney, Francesco Totti, Roberto Carlos, Paul Scholes and Luis Figo during the early 2000s.

With the new Swedish Allsvenskan season usually kicking off at the end of March, it’s become an annual spring tradition for Stockholm-based club AIK to drop a special edition jersey that harkens back to its founding in 1891.

The last couple years have been blackout kits that’ve been celebrated around the globe, but this time around, AIK and Nike have elected for all white on the night.