World Cup teams look to gain an edge with uniform advancements
Reporting from Herzogenaurach, Germany -- Walk the sprawling 285-acre Adidas campus here and you won’t get far before you’re stopped by an iron fence, a locked gate or a security guard. Many buildings are simple barracks-like structures, giving the whole place the feel of a military camp — which, in fact, it was.
Built in the 1930s as a secret air base for Hitler’s war machine, it’s where the Luftwaffe trained its fighter pilots. After the war, the U.S. used it as a radar base to eavesdrop on the Eastern Bloc. And when the Berlin Wall came down, the Americans went home and Adidas moved in.
But what goes on behind those walls is still highly classified. “If you went in — if we let you in — you would see other products of the coming years,” says Klaus Rolshoven of the Adidas innovation team.
Much of what Adidas has been working on is no longer hidden, however, since the 12 teams the company is outfitting in this month’s World Cup have already debuted uniforms with myriad features designed to provide a competitive advantage.
Adidas isn’t alone. Nike is providing uniforms for nine Cup teams, each with advances it claims will allow players to run faster, jump higher and stay cooler. Other companies that will be represented in South Africa, such as Puma, Joma and Brooks, make similar claims.
Call them sartorial steroids, another weapon of artificial enhancements to help a body do things it could not have done on its own.
“Looking at apparel for the first time, we’re starting to work on the body above the ankle,” says Brady Anderson, another Adidas IT member who helped design the uniforms Mexico, France, Argentina and Germany, among others, will wear in South Africa. “And it’s just scratching the surface of what we can do. So absolutely this is a new area of performance enhancement.”
One that, given its brief but controversial, track record, has the potential to tilt the playing field in favor of those who can afford cutting-edge technology and away from those who can’t. “In terms of creating an unlevel playing field, in some cases it does,” says Phil Dickinson, Nike’s global creative director for soccer.
In the first 18 months after high-tech polyurethane body suits made by Adidas and others were introduced into swimming, for example, 135 world records were broken. Italian Coach Alberto Castagnetti called it “technological doping” and FINA, swimming’s world governing body, moved to ban the suits, claiming the technologies they used — including some borrowed from NASA — provided an unfair advantage by increasing buoyancy while reducing drag, both of which made swimmers go faster.
The new technologies woven into the soccer kits — some of which came from swimming — will also improve performance, but at a much more reasonable rate.
For decades soccer uniforms were designed with a focus on appearance first and comfort second. There was little thought given to the notion that clothing could affect performance.
Now, dressing for success requires the help of biomechanical labs and doctors and scientists who test their work with computer-generated sweat maps and something called doppler ultrasound.
“Any athlete who is serious about the sport they participate in is going to look for an edge,” Dickinson says. “If you look back 20 years and compare the world of the professional footballer to today, you will find significant differences.”
Adidas added compression fabrics and thermoplastic urethane bands to the 14 undergarments its kits contain, improvements it claims will correct posture and form much as orthotics correct gait. And according to tests performed in the University of Calgary’s high-performance lab, the company says, the innovations contributed to a 4% improvement in jumping ability and a 1.1% improvement in speed over a 30-meter course.
“This is more performance enhancement than we’ve ever seen in any product that we’ve released before,” says Brady, a Canadian-born biomechanics expert.
By applying pressure to certain muscle groups, Anderson said, the amount of oxygen and energy those muscles receive can be enhanced, allowing those muscles to perform better. Bands woven into the outer layers provide “subtle mechanical clues to put you in an upright position.”
As for Nike, the kits it designed for the U.S., Brazil, Portugal include foam pods the company claims will absorb impact and protect against abrasion. And by using recycled polyester and new lightweight materials, Nike says its uniform tops now are 15% lighter than the ones it made four years ago.
“There are more games played than ever before. This means less recovery time for players between games and more fatigue. Players are also bigger and stronger. Impacts have increased during this time by more 10% per game,” Dickinson says. “Players and athletes embrace technology and performance.”
But if the latest wave of equipment designs have raised eyebrows by raising performance, rivals Brady and Dickinson agree that the practice is almost as old as the World Cup itself.
In 1954 Adi Dassler’s German shoe company provided the West German team with a revolutionary boot that featured replaceable screw-in studs — an advantage that proved decisive in Germany’s 3-2 win over Hungary in a final played in a deluge.
Dassler’s company? Adidas.
“Our company was founded on finding performance-enhancing products in sports,” Brady says. “It’s a continuing balance that we have to evolve with the governing bod[ies] on agreeing on the next step.”
