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What is the newest material for football boots and what is the best?

Traditionally, football boots have been made from leather, though these days a combination of man-made (synthetic) fibres are used either in addition to or in replace of leather. Using synthetic materials enables a lot of interesting and useful shapes to be created. Adidas produced their Predators back in 1996, using rubber ridges to help swerve the ball, and this year a company called Concave have developed a boot specifically shaped to cup the ball and increase the boot's sweet-spot. More info on them here: http://www.footy-boots.com/concave-football-boots-4586/

Most of these new materials carry copyrighted names and the exact compositions of them are difficult to find, but most appear to be a kind of polymer (plastic).

To answer your question more specifically, Nike were recently challenged to produce a boot with no financial restraints at all, to create something that would be the fastest and lightest boot on the market. They ended up with a boot made almost entirely from carbon fibre, which is a very strong yet very light composite material. You can read more about the boot here: http://www.footy-boots.com/nike-mercurial-sl/  Yours for only £240!

by Chris Taylor