ADIDAS X CLOT PUTS ESPADRILLE SOLES ON THE SAMBA AT $140

A football boot built in 1949 for icy pitches now has a sole made from woven raffia, styled by a Hong Kong streetwear label, sold at a Swedish sneaker retailer, timed to a World Cup that has not kicked off yet. That is the adidas Samba Espadrille, and it is live now at Sneakersnstuff alongside the Mundial, the two silhouettes Edison Chen's CLOT chose to carry its football capsule.

The idea is specific enough to survive the collab fatigue that usually swallows a sneaker press release. adidas and CLOT are not adding a new colorway to an old shoe. They are replacing a structural part, the midsole, with a construction borrowed from a completely different shoemaking tradition.

The Rubber Sole Is Gone, Replaced By Raffia

The Samba Espadrille starts from the Samba Millennium, the leather upper adidas has kept close to unchanged since the silhouette's football roots. CLOT swaps the rubber midsole for a woven raffia espadrille sole, the rope soled construction usually associated with summer slip ons rather than a football boot. Style code KJ0274, the original White and Black pair, released May 2, 2026 at 140 dollars through adidas.com, the CONFIRMED app, and select retailers.

That detail is not decorative. CLOT has framed the espadrille sole as a nod to the traditional Chinese slipper, a construction with its own centuries old lineage. Pairing it with a shoe adidas built for European football fields is the entire point. It is a materials swap that carries a cultural argument, not just a design flourish.

Espadrille construction is normally hand woven, jute or raffia wrapped and stitched into a flexible sole meant for a beach or a courtyard, not a pitch. Grafting it onto the Samba Millennium's leather upper means the shoe keeps its football silhouette while losing the traction and structure that made the original design work on ice in 1949. That tension, a boot sole swapped for a slipper sole, is what makes the Espadrille a design statement rather than a straightforward reissue. Nobody is meant to play football in these.

Three More Colorways Landed June 18

adidas and CLOT followed the initial release with a Football Club capsule on June 18, 2026, adding three summer ready colorways, Classic Black, Grass Green, and Floral Pink, each also priced at 140 dollars. FO's own coverage of the wider Mundial Collection rollout noted that CLOT's relationship with adidas already stretches back more than two decades since the label's Hong Kong founding in 2003. The Espadrille is not a new partnership finding its footing. It is a two decade collaboration applying itself to one specific silhouette ahead of one specific event.

That context matters because the World Cup arrives in North America in 2026, and adidas has multiple collaborators building football adjacent capsules around it. Sneakersnstuff's own product page groups the Espadrille alongside six other new adidas silhouettes, including Samba OG Wmns and the Adistar family, giving retail context for where the Espadrille sits inside a much larger seasonal push.

adidas Is Running Several Collaborators Toward One Tournament

CLOT is not the only name adidas has attached to its 2026 World Cup buildup. Sp5der's F50 Formotion, fronted by Lamine Yamal, released the same season for 190 dollars, and adidas has kept a steady release cadence of football adjacent collaborations across the spring and summer. What separates the Espadrille inside that crowd is that it is not chasing a player endorsement or a bedazzled tracksuit moment. It is a quieter argument about sole construction and cultural reference, aimed at buyers who already know what a Samba is and want to see what happens when its structure gets rewritten.

The Verdict Is In The Construction, Not The Hype

The Samba Espadrille earns its price by doing something a straight colorway release does not: it changes how the shoe is built, not just how it looks. A rope soled construction on a football silhouette is a genuine cross category move, not a marketing bullet point. At 140 dollars, that puts it in line with standard Samba collaboration pricing while adding a sole swap most collabs never attempt. For a World Cup capsule stacked with straightforward colorway drops, the Espadrille is the one worth buying for the construction alone, not just the name on the box.