At the first ever World Cup final, between Uruguay and Argentina in 1930, a disagreement arose over which team would supply the match football. Eventually FIFA was forced to intervene with a teacherly solution.
Argentina could use their preferred ball for the first half, while Uruguay could use their own, larger and heavier ball for the second. At half-time the Argentines were 2-1 up, but when the final whistle blew they were 4-2 down. Argentina werent pleased.
The upset prompted FIFA to update its rules, and since then almost every World Cup has used just one type of ball throughout all of its games. But unlike most sports, in which the design of the official ball is uniform and strictly regulated, the World Cup match ball is tweaked and updated at least every four years, forcing players to adapt to small differences in how it handles.
New designs are not always an improvement on whats come before. The notorious match ball of the 2010 World Cup, called the Jabulani, was resoundingly criticised for being too light and unpredictable, and was humourously likened to the cheap plastic footballs that hang in nets outside shops by the seafront. It was so controversial that NASA scientists were drafted in to study its wonky aerodynamics, and determined that the balls surface was too smooth.
“I think the problems were overstated,” says football journalist and broadcaster Sheridan Bird. “Diego Forlan of Uraguay scored so many incredible free kicks at that World Cup, which leads me to believe the problem was with the players, not the ball.
“Theres the old adage, a bad workman blames his tools, and if youre a really good player you just dont make excuses. Messi could play with a cabbage.”
The 1970 World Cup was the first to be televised around the world, and the contrasting panels of the Telstar helped it stand out on black and white television sets.
The official ball of the 2018 World Cup has so far avoided much criticism. Called the Telstar 18, its a callback to the very first Adidas-designed ball from the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. The original is the most recognisable football design in history, comprising 32 panels of black and white hexagons and pentagons. Youll see it if you open your phone and search for the football emoji, or close your eyes and imagine a football.
The 1970 World Cup was the first to be televised around the world, and the contrasting panels of the Telstar helped it stand out on black and white television sets. The name comes from the Telstar communications satellite, which broadcast the first television pictures through space, and was itself spherical and dotted with distinctive black solar panels. Though its long stopped functioning, that small, football-shaped satellite is still silently orbiting the Earth today, presumably alongside some of the Jabulanis that went over the crossbar.
The Telstar paved the way for the iconic and long-lived Tango in 1978, and although improvements such as polyurethane coatings, foam layers and rubberised seams were introduced over subsequent tournaments, the basic aesthetic of the ball remained unchanged for two decades. In 1998 the final iteration of the Tango appeared in red, white and blue to honour the host nation France, and (as well as being, ahem, the last Tango in Paris) it was the first multi-coloured ball to be used at a World Cup final.
The introduction of an NFC chip to the 2018 ball (for brand integration with Adidas, of course) suggests weve hit a design ceiling, but Bird thinks otherwise. “Therell always be new designs,” says Bird, “as long as there are balls to be sold. Theyre always finding stronger and more durable materials, and ways to make them fly more predictably.”
And is there any one design element that will endure for another half a century?
“Well, it will always be round.”
