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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.

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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).

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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.

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