The first soccer balls were made of leather, hand-sewn, and required the laces to be undone so the interior air bladder could be filled. These heavy laces, made of leather, made the action of heading the ball particularly painful. This prompted a new innovation in valve design, which eliminated the laces, made the new balls easier to head and allowed the ball to better keep its shape (DeSantis et al, "The World's Ball").
Each team had a preferred ball design that they would choose before each match. During the first World Cup in 1930, Argentina and Uruguay played with two different ball designs. The first half was played with a ball design favored by Argentina; the second half was played with a ball favored by Uruguay. Argentina was wining 2 goals to 1 in the first half, but Uruguay came back in the second half to win 4 to 2.
The classic black-and-white ball was designed for the 1970 World Cup with the hope that the bold black-and-white leather panels would be easy to spot on black-and-white television sets.
Current ball designs are heat-sealed with an aerodynamic seam pattern, though some, after the 2010 World Cup, criticized these ball designs for creating unpredictable ball trajectories.
Works Cited
1930 Fifa World Cup. Digital image. FIFA. N.p., n.d.
Web. 1 Oct. 2015.
1930 Soccer Ball. Digital image. New York Times.
N.p., 12 June 2014. Web. 1 Oct. 2015.
1970 Soccer Ball. Digital image. New York Times.
N.p., 12 June 2014. Web. 1 Oct. 2015.
2014 Soccer Ball. Digital image. New York Times.
N.p., 12 June 2014. Web. 1 Oct. 2015.
DeSantis, Alicia, and Mika Gröndahl, Josh Keller, Graham
Roberts, and Bedel Saget. "The
World’s Ball." New York
Times 12 June 2014. Web.
