Battle of the boot brands: Nike edges out adidas in the Champions League

Nike has come out as the top boot brand which scored the most number of goals in the UEFA Champions League 2018-2019. It had a total of 176 goals and the top models which contributed to this included Mercurial (90 goals), Phantom VNM (39), Tiempo (19) and Phantom VSN (19), according to a study done by iPrice's research team which looked at data from the UEFA website and Football Boots DB.

Meanwhile, adidas came in second with 154 goals and the models X (85), Nemeziz (31) and Predator (24) were among the top five boots that scored the most goals during the recent season. According to iPrice, adidas X's performance was more prominent in the Champions League final as it helped Liverpool score its two winning goals in the finals. Coming in third was Puma with 24 goals and the top two models were One (15) and Future (9). Majority of the overall Champions League goals (83%) this season came from Nike and adidas, iPrice said.

Nike, adidas and Puma were among the six boot brands which helped football players score goals in the latest season, including New Balance, Under Armour and Mizuno. Meanwhile, a total of 360 goals were scored using 18 different models of football boots in the 125 main games of the Champions League this season.

Overall, iPrice said that America (Nike, New Balance and Under Armour) and German (adidas and Puma) brands stood out in boosting players' game performance. In the meantime, Mizuno, the sole Japanese brand, contributed as much as 0.28% in goal production.

When it came to individual football players, Lionel Messi scored the most number of goals (12) with adidas' Nemeziz boots followed by Robert Lewandowski (8) with Nike's Phantom VNM and Dusan Tadic (6) with Nike's Tiempo.