Hazard, Mbappé... testing the Mercurial 21 Blackout. What’s Nike up to?

It seems that over the last few weeks and months, we’ve seen several Mercurial players wearing all-black boots. And if you’ve been around the block a few times, you’ll know what that might mean – let’s have a chat about it. 

11 January 2021 - Written by David del Río
During various training sessions, we’ve seen several players wearing all-black boots, and whether by chance or not, they’re all players who wear Nike Mercurial football boots. In the close-ups, we can see Eden Hazard’s all-black football boots, and although at first glance they look like his usual Mercurials, if we look closely at the photo we can see a number of changes. 

post card Nike-Mercurial-21-Blackout-futbolemotion-1.webp

Firstly, we can see a change in the weave of the Nike Mercurial football boot itself, which appears slightly finer and features certain indentations that look like they’re on the inside; these are likely some sort of inner lining that is radically different from the current one.  

We’ve also seen Real Madrid’s Fede Valverde wearing a similar model; although in this case the collar is still high, we can see a slight modification to the sole, with a few more studs or longer ones – to be honest, the photo doesn’t really reveal much more than that. 

post card Nike-Mercurial-21-Blackout-futbolemotion-2.webp

And as it seems they weren’t just spotted at the White House, Atlético Madrid’s Renán Lodi was also spotted wearing this model, on which we can clearly see those side dimples, suggesting a very thin upper as well as significant internal reinforcement in what appears to be Nike’s new football boot. 

post card Nike-Mercurial-21-Blackout-futbolemotion-3.webp

Naturally, when talking about Mercurial players, we couldn’t leave out Kylian Mbappé; the PSG player was also spotted wearing this new prototype. On this occasion, we also saw him wearing the ‘high-top’ version, and to be honest, apart from its truly unique construction, there’s little we can deduce about the model Mbappé is wearing. 

post card Nike-Mercurial-21-Blackout-futbolemotion-4.webp

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