All aspects of football have changed over the years with the technology that is used in football clothing included. Years ago football kit designers used basic materials in order to manufacture football shirts such as 100% cotton and polyester. Nowadays things have changed dramatically with gadgets such as sensors recording the player's movement being introduced.Approximately 20 years ago big sports brand Nike were one of the first to bring out their Nike Dri Fit technology, this is a very popular choice with sports fans. It was not only football shirts that were made out of this material, Nike designed a variety of different sports clothing. Nike Dri fit was first used in golf; many professional golfers such as Tiger Woods have praised the new technology. He once said 'With Dri-FIT, it keeps me cool and because of the stretch in the fabric, it moves with you and doesn't hold you back." As well as Nike's newer Dri fit technology, previous materials used included Therma-fit and storm-fit technology. Unlike Dri fit which is designed to keep you cool therma-fit and storm-fit are designed to keep you dry and warm.
Many Premier League football clubs have their kits manufactured by Nike, the sports brand has become very popular over the years and is now used by some of the best football teams around including Manchester United and Barcelona, the Barcelona Home Football Shirt is a great example. The Dri fit technology is designed to keep you cool by wicking away any unwanted sweat from the body, the material moves any sweat away from the body and through the fabric layer away from the skin which helps it to evaporate. Nike are up against fellow sports brand and closest competitor Adidas. The German sports brand has always been competing with Nike for brand-lovers in the public. Adidas have designed their very own technology for football clothing, this is called Climacool technology. This is very similar to Dri fit as it is designed to keep you cool during sport. There are specific mesh panels on most of Adidas's designs. The Climacool technology uses micro ventilation allowing air to travel through to the skin, Climawarm is also available and is designed to preserve heat in clothing keeping you warm.
These brands seem to be the most popular and have been for many years now but a new brand that appeared on a certain Premier League kit at the start of the 2012 season promised to bring something new to the market, a kit those sensors to record player's movement, breathing and heart rate. This technology is E39 by Under Armour, worn last season by Tottenham Hotspur. The American brand boasted that the new kit designed by them would have the ability to tell how the player was feeling by their heart rate and breathing rate, this would be interested with a player getting ready to take a penalty-kick. Tottenham Hotspur agreed on a £50 million a year deal with the company. Under Armour look promising, Spurs will be using them until 2016 so it will be interesting to see how much more these technologies can change and improve football clothing.
Other brands which use some great clothing technology include Warrior, Liverpool's designer who uses WarTech technology designed to keep you dry, Puma who use DryCell and Umbro's Evolution X as worn by the England squad for many years in training sessions. Technology today is becoming very advanced, i am sure we will have an exciting future ahead when it comes to new technologies being founded and with even more new brands appearing in the Premier League it will give some great competition for Nike and Adidas.
What do you make of the latest clothing technology? Do you think it is all money making scheme from the brand companies or do you think it will improve player's performance?
Emily writes exclusively for SoccerBox, here you take a look at a large range of football shirts, kits and training wear using the latest technology.
blog sites
