Skepta Edits are the latest Football TikTok's trend And they are different from whatever came before
Last week, when Adel Taarabt announced his retirement from football, I did what anyone who grew up idolising the Moroccan playmaker would have done: I opened TikTok. I was hoping to find an old video set to “Angeleyes” by ABBA. When I couldn’t find it, I settled for the hundreds of clips that flooded my search results. There was the tunnel clip from his Tottenham days, when two teammates grab their heads in disbelief, the goal against Napoli on his debut for AC Milan, and then a rapid-fire compilation of goals for Queens Park Rangers, capped by Neil Warnock’s famous story about threatening QPR players with a £50 fine if they passed the ball to Taarabt in their own half.
From Taarabt to Shaqiri: how the Skepta Edits started
I thought that would be enough. Then QPR – the club where Taarabt cemented his status as an OG “Streets don’t forget” baller – posted their own tribute video, and suddenly I found myself down a completely different rabbit hole. To celebrate Taarabt, the London club put together a series of his best moments soundtracked by “schooling seniors” by Frank Medley, a track that also features a freestyle from Skepta dating back to 2009. It’s an old-school beat with a hint of strings and a melancholic vocal loop, over which Skepta spits bars about making it from the bottom to the top. Pretty much the perfect soundtrack for Football TikTok, where nostalgia and the celebration of cult players are two of the strongest forces driving the algorithm.
Within 24 hours, I was surrounded by dozens of clips using the same track. Stoke City posted one for Xherdan Shaqiri, Everton for Steven Pienaar, Blackburn for Morten Gamst Pedersen, Charlton for Claus Jensen. It felt almost inevitable. Every English club, from the Premier League to League Two, has a cult player worth celebrating. Someone who carries the label of being underrated, but who managed to steal the hearts of supporters and football fans through the things they did on the pitch. England had seen a similar trend a couple of years ago with “Daytona” by the Stereophonics, used to celebrate heroes of the Barclays era, from Berbatov to Viduka and Okocha. And then there was the Italian trend that sent Emma Marrone’s “L’amore non mi basta” back up the charts thanks to edits of Massimiliano Allegri, while summer 2026 brought a new soundtrack in the form of “Tornerò” by I Santi California.
From clubs to TikTok users: who is driving the Skepta Edits
There’s nothing particularly surprising about it. That’s simply how trends are born and evolve. As soon as their reach and appeal become clear, brands – although in this case it would be more accurate to call them football clubs – start creating content around their own world and plugging it into the trend. Music is fundamental, almost the very essence of the format. And with the #SkeptaEdits, the opportunity to celebrate a player from the past through a video set to a contemporary track, capable of reaching younger audiences who might not know the player or understand their impact on a club’s history, was simply too good to ignore. Then there are the edits made by ordinary TikTok users, who have taken the opportunity to celebrate their own cult heroes – including players who may never have even played in England.
When a trend becomes a community
I’ve seen and lived through dozens of football trends on TikTok, but these #SkeptaEdits felt different. At some point I started wondering why I hadn’t skipped a single one. It couldn’t just be a simple love of football, nor could it be the curiosity of seeing how deep this tunnel could go, waiting to discover which obscure player would eventually surface and force me to remember some story about them. Then I realised that, quite simply, watching these videos made me feel better. I’m not a kid anymore, and I’m going through a period in which I sometimes feel lonely. Of course, there are friends, family, the gym, the occasional girl who says yes to going out, but you can’t always expect someone to answer your message.
Everyone has their own life, and you have to respect those boundaries. You have to learn how to be emotionally self-sufficient and keep moving forward. And these videos became the equivalent of a book, a film, a TV series. They require less time, but still allow me to pour all my melancholy into them, finding comfort in the weight of a single image – a goal, a celebration in slow motion – perfectly matched to a soaring note in the soundtrack. Maybe sometimes that’s all there is to it: holding on to the things you love, using the community you’ve never physically met as a place to spend a few minutes, somewhere to belong for a little while and forget about whatever is happening around you.
