I'm a roadie and a racer, I have expensive carbon-soled clipless shoes and ride Speedplay pedals. And I think that clipless pedals are seriously oversold. There are benefits to foot retention, which of course is why I use clipless pedals. But the benefit is about keeping your foot on the pedal and not having the proprioceptive cost of having to make sure your foot and the pedal stays in contact. There's very little advantage in terms of speed.

So here's the thing. There are two basic means of keeping your foot attached to the pedal. One is clipless pedals, as mentioned. The other is toe clips and straps. In the Old Days, there was no functional difference in how securely these held your feet - with cleated cycling shoes, toe clips and straps are every bit as locked-in as clipless pedals. Clipless pedals won out because they are way easier to get in and out of, and they're nicer to your feet. In the modern era, toe clips are treated as more of an intermediate step between plain pedals with no retention at all and clipless pedals are are totally secure. People tend to use them with tennis shoes or other non cycling-specific footwear that can still be slid backwards out of the clip relatively easily.

My opinion is that the benefits of the modern use of toe clips and straps are extremely marginal. They do hold your feet in place reasonably well, and you can sort of pull up on the pedals if you really want to, but they're kind of loosey-goosey, and, most of all, still pretty uncomfortable if you want them to be at all secure. Personally, I would rather ride plain pedals than clips and straps with tennis shoes most of the time.