Nike’s rumored upcoming football boot — the Mercurial Zoom Vapor 16 Pro FG Air Max 95 — bucks a trend in the footwear industry. While an increasing cohort of sneakers inspired by football boots are hitting the market, Nike is launching the opposite: These are football boots inspired by sneakers.

(A quick translation for any American readers, by “football boot” I mean “soccer cleat”.) 

The Air Max 95 has become a full-on football boot. 30 years after it first debuted, the technical bubble-soled sneaker is back in its original “neon” colorway: a grey gradient upper contrasted by hits of neon green.

Manipulated into the form of a Nike Mercurial, with neon green blade-shaped studs, the boot combines two altogether different footwear styles.

It's a confusing proposition at first glance, seeing a shoe as ubiquitious as the Air Max 95 transformed into a foreign football-appropriate shape. But nobody can deny that it's a fun idea (or that it's a fun final product, for that matter).

At the time of writing, the release of this football boot is an unconfirmed online leak. However, there is some precedent for Nike to create this type of hybridized shoe. 

A year ago, the Nike Air Mercurial TN was released, a combination of the Nike Air Max Plus (a similar style of techy Air Max sneaker) with a Nike Mercurial. An Air Max 95 boot makes for a natural successor to that hybrid TN.

And since 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of the Air Max 95, there couldn't be a better time to drop a wild, hybrid football boot version of the shoe.