It was the middle of last week that New Balance held their official launch in London. Now many, including myself were anticipating that this event would also serve as the official launch of New Balance’s silo of boots. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The event literally was a brand launch, complete with sponsored players and announcing the clubs which would be sporting New Balance kits in the upcoming 2015-16 season.
The boots were conspicuous by their absence, however, it is surely just a matter of time before they make their appearance on the market, I mean Aaron Ramsey has been sporting the branded boots since November of 2014.
The imminent release does bring about an all important question. What exactly can we hope to expect from New Balance’s boots?
At this point, it would be important to impart that anything you’re about to read is pure conjecture and guess work; we aren’t going to know what New Balance properly has to offer until they release their wares to the marketplace. Also I’m going to focus solely on the version that the New Balance sponsored players have been wearing and not the other silo’s which have been floating about the internet.
To find out what we should expect from the new New Balance boot, I suppose we should look at what we know about it, which admittedly isn’t all that much as New Balance have been keeping their cards close to their vest. For instance we know that the boot consists of a synthetic which has a waffled or dimpled pattern (Hypervenomesque if you’re looking for a comparison) on the strikezones of it.
We also know that players of differing styles have been wearing the boot, just to use three Belgian players plying their trade in Manchester as an example. You have Vincent Kompany who sported Warrior’s power release the Skreamer, the walking palm tree that is Marouane Fellaini who was remarkably the face of the Warrior Gambler a control boot, and Adnan Januzaj who combined his speed and trickery with the Warrior Superheat.
Given the differing styles of players who’ve been sporting the New Balance boot over the last couple months, personally I am hoping that the boot has the possibility to be a kind of Swiss Army Knife of the boot world. Something which would be at home in most any role on the pitch, something similar to what we saw in the Puma evoPOWER 1. If New Balance are reading my hopes, then they could be onto something which could very much have a shout at SC 101’s Boot of the Year 2015, and that would certainly be a pretty incredible hello to the boot world.
We at SC101 can’t wait until New Balance finally release their boots, I know for a fact that the Gaffer is chomping at the bit to review a pair and let you know exactly what to expect from the brands return to the soccer boot market!
What do you hope to see from the new New Balance boot? Leave a comment below with your hopes for the new brand.