Adidas Made the Handball Spezial Even More Spezial

Now this is a “Spezial” shoe. The Handball Spezial has had more than just a resurgence of late. It went from a shoe that Americans had never heard of, for the most part, wasn’t even sold in the States until a few years ago, to one of Adidas’ most popular, mainstream shoes. The Samba has taken the footwear market, to put it lightly, and the Handball Spezial capitalized off that trend, especially with women. But now there’s a version of the shoe coming out that looks to give consumers, and obsessives, a more standout version of the shoe.

In Adidas, there’s the Handball Spezial shoe, which was made for the sport of European handball in the 1970s. And there’s also the Spezial line, or SPZL, which is crafted by Gary Aspden and visits the brand’s archive and brings it into the future from a distinctly European and British perspective. The Handball Spezial is important to that line, and it’s been revisited multiple times over in forms of different sneakers over the years. Now, Aspden and crew are striking while the iron’s hot. 

Aspden revealed today that part of the Spring/Sumer collection for 2025, Spezial will be doing a Handball Cup SPZL sneaker. It shares the same midsole as the Handball Spezial, but the upper is different.

In an Instagram post, Aspden breaks down the history and intent behind the design of the shoe. “In the late 70s/early 80s there were a number of adidas shoes made for ‘specialist’ sports that carried the name Spezial (eg Weightlifting Spezial, Rock Climbing Spezial, etc). The best known of these specialist sport shoes is the Handball Spezial,” he writes. “It’s a shoe that played a key role in the original ideology (and naming) of the adidas SPZL range i.e. a shoe that was designed for a specialist sport like Handball was adopted for its look/aesthetics by youths in the UK – most of whom have little or no interest in that sport.”

The Handball Cup SPZL is actually new. It’s not a shoe from the past, but a reinterpretation of the shoe. Aspden says there’s many versions of the Handball Spezials over the years, mainly because Adidas shoes in the past were made under license in different countries and geographic regions and didn’t follow a uniform standard. 

“We revised the toebox (traditionally the Handball Spezial toebox tends to be much longer than on these) and changed the proportions of the toe overlay (they are very shallow) which meant having to rework the rest of the upper pattern,” he writes. “Once we had the foundations of the upper how we wanted, the idea was to create an extension of the ‘70s Handball Spezial that also leans into the design language of ‘80s Handball shoes.”

He goes on to say, “The Handball Cup SPZL are defined by these new elements – the ‘swooping’ overlay that supports the collar in a contrast leather with red piping, the white tongue with red branding and the honey coloured gum sole are all nods to the Handball Top. We stuck with the original blue/white Handball Spezial colourway (with a red pop). The goal was to create a new shoe that feels like an archival extension of one of adidas’s all time greats.”

The shoes will release on March 27. A price has not been announced. But they certainly look great.