We Asked Football Casuals What They Think Of the Current Terrace Sneaker Trend

When you think of football fashion beyond standard football shirts, there’s a very good chance that the next thing that comes to mind would be the casuals. As passionate about their clothes as they are about the game, casuals are a football subculture that are known for having a very particular aesthetic and are often associated with wearing Stone Island, C.P. Company, Fred Perry and adidas.

Casual culture really took off in the 1970s, when fans started following their favourite UK teams across the channel as they took on European challengers for the first time. In doing so, they discovered some of the finest brands that the continent had to offer and brought back armfuls of the gear to wear on the terraces. When it came to flexing new gear, the general rule of thumb was ‘the rarer the better.’ Generally, these brands were pretty inaccessible within the UK at the time, except for adidas, which as the second biggest sports brand in the world, may initially appear to be an odd pick.

Before casual culture settled into its famed aesthetic, football hooligans preferred a chunky Doc-style boot on match day. This came from skinhead culture, which had originally shifted from a largely peaceful movement in the 60s to being infiltrated by much less peaceful far-right groups in the decades to follow. Though Hooliganism did have extremely negative connotations, the ‘English Disease’ was still primarily focused on club rivalry, although we should note that since the Britpop era casual style has been completely associated with the look and not the politics. That being said, at the time, the move away from boots was largely influenced by the practicality factor: whether you’re running away from the police or rival fans, it’s far easier to run in sneakers than Docs. Similarly, the main reason these fans favoured branded garms over club shirts was for a similar reason – it made you much harder to spot by the opposing team’s fanbase.

Looking back, you could easily argue that casuals were the closest thing there was to being a sneakerhead. It started with the adidas Trimm Trab – a style that managed to cement itself within the casual culture through films like The Firm, before moving onto the Stan Smith, which to this day remains the Three Stripes best-selling sneaker, and then Gazelles and Sambas found their footing. It’s the latter two styles that we’re witnessing having a resurgence right now, spurred on by collaborative efforts by designer brands like Gucci and Wales Bonner. Since then, Sambas have seen a huge increase in searches on Google Trends, and Gazelles are slowly working their way back up again after peaking back in 2018. Known for being particularly protective over these cultural icons, we set out to find out exactly what self-proclaimed casuals thought of the trend, and how they felt about their beloved styles finding favour with a mainstream audience once again.

Hailing from County Durham, adidas enthusiast and collector Chris admitted that he was a bit of a latecomer to the casual sneaker scene, although he caught up pretty quickly. “I got into collecting just over two years ago. I was in the pub when someone told me my trainers didn’t match the shorts I was wearing, and when I woke (and sobered up!) the next day, I had three email confirmations telling me I’d bought six pairs!” A couple of years later and Chris’ collection is now a “modest” collection of about 90 styles and colourways. We told you they were sneakerheads.

Kenny, who’s based in Nottingham, takes a slightly different approach to collecting. “I just have a thing for nice pairs of trainers,” he explains. “My friends always seem to comment because I go for colourful or interesting choices, but I’ve always felt drawn to adidas because of the football connection. Predators were always the football boots to have while I was growing up, so having a pair of Sambas and Gazelles to wear casually just went hand in hand.”

An increase in Google searches is one thing, but for a trend to really take off, the silhouettes have to be spotted out and about in the wild. After being papped on the feet of Bella Hadid, the Samba’s popularity has skyrocketed amongst the Gen-Z crowd, with TikTok leading the way and providing inspiration on how to style the silhouette. #adidassamba currently has over 8.8 million views on the app, with Gazelles often pitched as a good alternative should the Samba be sold out at your local store. With their introductions out of the way, we asked both collectors whether they’d noticed the silhouettes gaining popularity and if they were finding them more difficult to get hold of than usual.

Chris, who pretty much limits himself to only buying Gazelles, says that by opting for the more mainstream silhouette, the uptick in popularity has left him relying on raffles for the more limited releases, and therefore has had to succumb to the same barriers that we as sneakerheads know all too well. Kenny agrees, but adds that he feels that as a result the market has been flooded with what he calls ‘underwhelming colourways’. “Would the demand still be as high if miadidas was still a thing?” he wonders, “Who knows, but it’s fair to say it’s led me to back off buying trainers recently.”

It’s a fair point and one that rings true for a number of sneaker brands. The past couple of years has seen the sneaker scene dominated by certain silhouettes - with Nike Dunks and New Balance 550s leading the pack. While we’re not denying that these are great, everyday styles, there’s something to be said about fatigue and overproducing, and with a style that’s so closely connected to a niche subculture, the frustrations are likely to be even more amplified.

So, with that in mind, what’s to be said about these designer collaborations? A Gucci x adidas collaboration is hardly confined to a niche audience – in fact, searches for Gucci skyrocketed 286% in the 48 hours after the collaboration was announced, and the collaborative Gazelles featured on the LYST index as the platform’s 2nd Hottest Product of Q2. And, what’s even more interesting is that the Wales Bonner x adidas Samba took the top spot. Given the casuals’ love for designer brands and rare clothing, these collabs seemed like they could actually have the potential to be a match made in heaven. But, with the brands in question being so far removed from football, would the experiment backfire when it came to capturing a casual crowd?

Well, according to our investigation, it was a bit of a mixed response.

“I get why the brands did it,” says Kenny, “It’s just not my thing. I understand why it’s popular – it would be boring if we all liked the same thing. I just happen to prefer the classics, especially if they’re in a blue, yellow or green colourway.

“Gucci has never been a brand that appealed to me, and the Wales Bonner stuff isn’t my cup of tea either. In fact, the only collaboration I thought looked good recently was the C.P. Company collaboration.”

However, Chris disagreed and was very much into the partnerships. He told us: “I was impressed with both collabs. The materials, colours and styles felt like a perfect match. I bought two pairs of Wales Bonner Sambas because I thought they were really reasonably priced.

“Then, along came Gucci. I had to have a pair, so I managed to order the green velvet ones from Gucci, as they’d already sold out on adidas. After mulling it over in the pub with a few mates, I decided I had to have the monogrammed pair too. When I awoke the next morning and saw the confirmation, I went from being happily hungover to being T-total on all future purchases! It didn’t last long though, as I ended up buying the matching shorts as well.

So, there you have it. As with all sneaker trends, there’s always going to be some aversion to new waves in popularity, but there’s always comfort in the fact that really, it all comes down to the fact that people are just really passionate about sneakers. With trends now seeming to appear and reappear faster than ever, we’re excited to see what’s next for terrace-style silhouettes, and the endless opportunities for styling them.

If you’re dead set on adding a pair to your collection, check out our selection of adidas Gazelles and Sambas on site, or why not weigh in on the debate over on Twitter?

Want to know more about the relationship between football and fashion? Why not check out...