The lead-up to the 2026 World Cup has produced so many beautiful football boots that they’re overshadowing the new-season international kits. There’s Wales Bonner introducing snakeskin adidas boots, Y-3 unleashing beastly footwear, and Travis Scott making his bootmaking debut. But none are more surprising than Thrasher, the 45-year-old authority on all things skateboarding, collaborating on an adidas Predator.

Skating and football once never mixed. “It caused an uproar in the skate world,” Lev Tanju, Palace’s co-founder, told me of the London skate label’s 2012 Umbro collaboration. “Everyone thought [skateboarding and football] should be completely separate.” How times change. 

The two worlds increasingly overlap. Palace recently opened its own indoor football pitch last year with Nike, Supreme constantly recreates old football gear with its logo, Dime always releases a huge range of football-style shirts each season, and the Copa Mundial, the classic ‘70s adidas football boot, has become a skate shoe at the hands of OG skater Dennis Busenitz. 

But Thrasher football boots (or soccer cleats, as Americans prefer to say) on-pitch is a new frontier. 

The biggest publisher in skateboarding brought its signature flames (you know, from those tees everyone wore in 2017) to the toebox of adidas’ top-of-the-line boot, added iridescent material to the sole, and stamped its logo everywhere — there’s Thrasher branding on the heel, on the tongue, and on the tongue strap. 

Inter Miami’s Rodrigo De Paul was the first to get his hands on a pair, playing the last few games in the as-yet-unconfirmed Thrasher collaboration.

It’s another fashionable football boot to add to the growing list, alongside Raheem Sterling’s Stone Island x New Balance pairs and Jude Bellingham’s favorite all-white Y-3 Predators. And it’s the first skater-backed pair to enter the field. 

We’re officially in an era of professional skaters shredding in football shoes and professional footballers scoring in skater boots.

Highsnobiety has affiliate marketing partnerships, which means we may receive a commission from your purchase. Want to shop the products our editors actually love? Visit HS Shopping and subscribe to Shopper for recs on all things fashion, footwear, and beauty.