The video clip will feel familiar to anyone who has watched an N.B.A. pregame show in the past decade.
A troop of athletic Adonises arrives at a sports facility, dressed in their finest and flashiest. You can spot a Miu Miu rugby here, a Margiela long-sleeve there. A gargantuan Hermès Haut à Courroies bag and a $7,100 suede Dior tote.
But these were not N.B.A. players. They were members of the French national football (well, soccer) team, massing last week at their training facility in Clairefontaine.
It used to be that only the most committed of European soccer fans would study clips of the French team arriving at Clairefontaine, searching for story lines in which players were fraternizing together or which slipping star was conspicuously absent.
In the past year or so, this footage has broken containment, for one real reason: the players’ outfits, which swing between the handsome and the “huh?”
“It’s like years ago, when the N.B.A. players were being more expressive with what they wear,” said Daniel-Yaw Miller, a writer who covers the intersection of sports and fashion on his Substack, SportsVerse.
It is yet more evidence of soccer’s swelling cultural presence in the United States that an ecosystem of social media accounts tracking N.B.A. player outfits are giving more attention to what soccer players wear a continent away. The timing feels less than accidental: The World Cup will take place in America this summer.
Last week, @ProTrending, an American Instagram account devoted to athletes’ style, uploaded a shot of the French forward Hugo Ekitike dressed in leather pants and a white turtleneck with sleeves so tattered they looked as if they’d lost a battle with a paper shredder. The post is sandwiched between shots of Dwight Powell of the Dallas Mavericks and the W.N.B.A. superstar A’ja Wilson.
Many of these French players, in Mr. Miller’s assessment, don’t have stylists — they’re just big shoppers. Rare are the lucrative side deals with luxury labels dictating how they dress. (The exception is the French team’s captain, Kylian Mbappé, a Dior ambassador who was dutifully dressed head to toe in the brand last week.)
There is a winsome variance in how the French national team dresses. You get a player looking 16th Arrondissement prim in a black Barbour jacket and loafers, followed soon after by a teammate in a turquoise sweatsuit.
If there is a catalyst to soccer’s fashion awakening — a Russell Westbrook of French football — it’s Jules Koundé, a 27-year-old defender who plays for F.C. Barcelona. His style lands somewhere between memeable and admirable. Some highlights: a leather Marni jacket resembling a love seat rejiggered into a chore coat; Ugg moon boots; and a pleated Simone Rocha skirt worn with a splotchy knit tank top.
“His profile has raised by being the best dressed guy in football,” said Marc Beaugé, the editor of L’Etiquette magazine. Mr. Koundé has been welcomed by the fashion world, appearing in Jacquemus photo shoots and sitting front row at Louis Vuitton.
A spirit of clothing competition has since been stoked in the locker room.
“These players hate to lose at everything they do,” Mr. Beaugé said. “They hate being the losers of the game, and they hate to be losers even in the fashion department.”
Mr. Koundé was injured and did not travel with the national team last week. In his absence, the forward Michael Olise delivered the highlight-reel combo: gargantuan white sunglasses and a fuzzy hat with cat ears.
Soccer style, of course, has long been a fascination, lifting star players into paparazzi idols. Perhaps there’s no better example than David Beckham, whose memorable looks — the ponytailed blond hair, the sarong, the double-breasted Dior suits — are still remembered by people who have no idea what team he even played for. The Spanish forward Héctor Bellerín has tread the runway for Louis Vuitton, and the Italian striker Mario Balotelli was recently in a shoot for the British streetwear label Corteiz.
Soccer can also be a sport of stubborn standards. “It’s this very traditional conservative environment where players and teams can get real backlash for doing things slightly differently,” Mr. Miller said.
That tension has played out in France, where the anti-immigrant National Rally party continues to rise. The French national team’s roster includes many children of immigrants, and coverage of team appearances has occasionally spiraled into discussions of masculinity and race.
“It’s a separation between the old generation and the new football generation, in a political way,” Mr. Beaugé said.
When Mr. Koundé wore a pair of stacked Cuban-heel boots in 2024, it ignited days of discourse that one online magazine billed as “the bottine gate.” Later that year, Jérôme Rothen, a retired French national player, fumed on his radio show that the current team’s style was a “monumental circus.” Mr. Koundé shared a clip of the video, saying, “Gentlemen, you must not get carried away like that over such a small thing.”
“It’s a big exposure for the real proper France,” Mr. Beaugé said.
He said he didn’t love every outfit trotted out at Clairefontaine — but he still admired that these players were shaping how they want to be seen.
“Like it or not,” he said, “they represent France.”
Jacob Gallagher is a Times reporter covering fashion and style.
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