Timothée Chalamet Pulled Out a Fresh New Adidas Samba at the World Cup Final

Before Sunday’s World Cup final between Spain and Argentina kicked off, Timothée Chalamet was handed one of football’s biggest jobs. With his mini mullet flowing in the New Jersey wind, the actor carried the official Adidas Trionda Final match ball onto the pitch before La Roja went on to beat Argentina 1–0 in extra time. And, naturally, he did it in a pair of Adidas Sambas.Not the regular ones, though. Chalamet wore the Clot x Adidas Samba Espadrille, a very summer-y remix cooked up by Edison Chen’s Hong Kong streetwear label. A sequel to last year’s Stan Smith Espadrille, the collab takes the upper from the Samba Millennium, adds a suede toebox, swaps the usual gum sole for woven raffia, and stamps Clot’s logo across the heel in shiny gold foil. And the timing couldn’t have been any better, really.Maja Hitij - FIFA/Getty ImagesCast your mind back three years. It’s 2023 and the Samba is one of the most popular sneakers in the universe. Whether you were Ronnie Fieg or Grace Wales Bonner, every designer out there had a collab pair on shelves. For a while, it felt like the only shoe that anyone wanted. Then came the inevitable backlash—people got bored, trends moved on. Former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak pulled up in a pair, and TikTok more or less decided the Samba’s time was up.But it appears taht Chalamet is on a mission to bring it back, and he isn’t the only famous lad wearing ’em. Finn Wolfhard wore the classic white colorway in NYC back in January, while Harry Styles stepped out in a pair during an SNL monologue in March. Slowly but surely, the Three Stripes icon has been creeping back into rotation.And if there was ever a place for the comeback to be cemented, it was the World Cup. While the Samba is now known more as a lifestyle trainer, it actually began life as a football boot. Originally released in 1949 to help players train on frozen pitches, the version we know today arrived in 1972 with a redesigned outsole built for grip and quick changes of direction.So, is the so-called “Samba anxiety” era finally over? Timothée Chalamet carried the ball, Spain lifted the trophy, and Adidas’s OG soccer shoe suddenly looks fresh again. Not a bad result all round.This story originally appeared on British GQ.