The 2026 World Cup even made Thrasher change its mind The same brand that dissed Justin Bieber 10 years ago is now making collections for the World Cup
Ten years have passed since Thrasher Skateboarding, the merch brand born from the skateboarding magazine of the same name (edited until 2019 by Jake Phelps) and founded by Eric Swenson and Fausto Vitello, took aim at Justin Bieber and Rihanna, who - according to the brand - were wearing its pieces too often and in overly visible settings (such as live performances). The underlying issue, for Thrasher, was of course that the two pop stars did not embody the brand’s lifestyle and DNA in the slightest: independent, street-oriented, and certainly arrogant and irreverent in its communication, much like the most well-known skateboarding companies.
When Thrasher called out Justin Bieber and Rihanna
“We don’t send boxes to Justin Bieber or Rihanna or those fucking clowns. The pavement is where the real shit is. Blood and scabs, does it get realer than that?”
In short, Thrasher made a point of stating it openly: the timing was right, the brand was undeniably at its peak within the hypebeast universe, and that diss aimed at Rihanna and Bieber was even perceived as a smart marketing move to defend its status as an independent streetwear label. Perhaps also because the brand had grown so large, handling such massive volumes of orders, that having celebrities of that caliber wear its products would not have significantly boosted its popularity. Today, however, Thrasher collaborates with adidas on a line - which for now appears to be something of an exclusive tied to the Argentina national team - taking part in a partnership whose meaning is, at the very least, debatable, and openly aligning itself with one of the most famous national football teams in the world. All of this, clearly, in anticipation of the 2026 World Cup and, perhaps, also because Thrasher no longer sells as it once did, falling far short of its past figures.
Far from being a critique of collaborations — let alone those between skateboarding brands and football clubs - there is constant praise for projects such as Juventus x Palace Skateboards or for the football-inspired visual references used by brands like Supreme New York. In short, given the topics at hand, it would be rather empty to condemn a skateboarding brand for creating a collection with a national team ahead of a World Cup: instead, it is about highlighting how such a collaboration might have been readily dismissed by Thrasher back in 2016.
The collaboration between adidas, Thrasher, and the Argentina National Team
First of all, adidas and Thrasher chose to unveil it through a sort of exclusive with the Argentina national team: initially with the players, who wore some of the pieces during the international break, and then with a Predator boot featuring the skate brand’s iconic flames on the feet of Rodrigo De Paul. Not by chance, we are talking about an Inter Miami player, a club tied to a U.S. city that will be among the hottest hubs during the 2026 World Cup - if not the hottest - thanks to its large Latin community.
As for the rest, the collection includes classic pieces from the adidas Originals line, characterized by Thrasher’s iconic typeface: an overall truly unexpected release.