It was only earlier in January that a first look at the upcoming special adidas Samba ‘Messi’ editions surfaced, but now, beating them to release is a custom creation from Stepkicks called ‘What The Messi’. It’s seen the iconic Samba colourfully customised with the colours of Messi’s kits over the years, with the artist then getting to hand deliver a pair to Messi himself. “Dreams come true,” said Stepkicks in his Instagram post. “Never would I have imagined that my craft would land me the opportunity to design and hand-deliver a pair of my customs to the goat himself. Unreal.”

The shoes are 100 percent hand-painted, featuring several callouts to the legendary player, including his iconic number ten on the outer heel, his logo on the tongue of the right shoe, the World Cup on the tongue of the left shoe, and his children’s names on an inscription on the instep of the right heel. “Leo” and “Messi” replace the traditional “Samba” wording, positioned down the edge of the Three Stripes in the midfoot.

In fact, this is not the first pair of sneakers to be born from this concept, with Stepkicks first creating a ‘What the Messi’ Nike SB Dunk Low, but for obvious reasons, it probably wouldn’t have been well received if the Buenos Aires-born customiser handed them over! And so the Samba took its place as canvas, and the results are equally striking.