Soccer today - Forget the leather

We humans are a weird species, aren’t we? 22 guys chasing after a ball, while millions of the same species watch ecstatically, getting utterly depressed when the ball lands in one of the rectangular cages. Speaking about emotions! All that fuss because of a small ball. But it’s not just any kind of ball; it’s a soccer ball, of course. Mankind has invested a lot of innovative brainpower into improving it. Eons ago soccer balls were made of a stuffed pig bladder. Not any more! Today a soccer ball is a high-tech object.

However, nothing goes without plastics. Bayer, one of the leading plastics manufacturers, is an ideal partner for sports gear and sports equipment producers like Adidas. The innovative products that come out of this partnership are remarkable. At the World Cup in 2006 in Germany, the players kicked an absolute novelty around the playing field: the +Teamgeist. In order to make it to a mega event like the World Cup, the soccer ball has to meet a long list of requirements from the FIFA, the international soccer association. But that was a piece of cake for the +Teamgeist. It even surpassed these top standards.

Material, design, and finish of this high-tech product are optimally fitted together. The surface of the ball is totally different from what soccer balls used to be. The conventional 32 pentagons or hexagons are gone. The +Teamgeist soccer ball consists of only 14 panels that resemble propellers or turbines, a design that reduced the number of sections. With fewer seams and sections in the outer skin, the ball is significantly smoother and has an absolutely round outer layer that gives players a significantly better precision and control over the ball.

In terms of materials, Bayer plastics are all over the ball, both for the outer skin and the inside of the ball. Tailored polymers are propping up the soccer ball for top performance. And even during a regular game, during which a soccer ball is kicked roughly 20,000 times, the +Teamgeist doesn’t lose its drive. And no more bruised toes for the soccer players either. While previous soccer balls would absorb water and turn the ball into a canon ball, the +Teamgeist barely absorbs any water.

The development of these plastics is as focused as the soccer world champs during their training for the World Cup. If you would like to find out how the soccer ball gets its perfect round shape, read on here.