St George's Park played host to Nike's annual Innovation Showcase this month as the Swoosh took over England's footballing home for an epic global event of product, football and World Cup winners.
After invading Madrid last April and taking over Rome in September 2014, Nike's Innovation Showcase rocked up to football’s homeland armed with a stockpile of killer product ready to take the year by storm. The Swoosh kicked off proceeding by unveiling their latest line of athletic training wear including the Nike Free 3.0, before moving onto the new “Highlight Pack”, presented by VP of Nike Football Footwear, Max Blau. Nike also previewed their future line-up of small sided footwear by giving us our first official look at the upcoming Nike Football X collection, featuring the new Nike Mercurial X and Nike Magista X.
After an intense gym session with Manchester United fitness coach Tony Strudwick, we were amongst the first players worldwide to lace up in the new "Highlight Pack" on one of the world class training pitches at the St George's Park complex. Head Coach of the Nike Academy Jon Goodman put us through the same training drills usually reserved for the Nike Academy lads. A four-station set-up with drills designed to match the attributes of the Mercurial, Magista, Hypervenom and Tiempo, had us wishing we had spent more time stretching beforehand. 
Helping to inject some inspiration into our tight legs before our evening 11-a-side (refereed by Howard Webb, it should be said), Nike had lined up surprise appearances from World Cup winners Mario Götze and Jérôme Boateng, and (for good English measure) Manchester City’s James Milner. Prior to the match, we sat down with Mario Götze for a quick one-on-one to discuss academy football, Nike and (of course) those €2million World Cup final winning boots.
Check out all of the action in our short film above and stay tuned for the full interview with Mario Götze and a closer look at the Nike Football X colleciton with Max Blau.
