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World Cup Football

Football World Cup > History > Match Balls

World Cup Balls

The FIFA World Cup is the premier event in World Football, FIFA have proactively developed all parts of the game, including innovations in the match ball design. Over the years we have seen more and more technology being introduced to the ball design, giving it better weather resistance and better performance. Adidas have been the official ball designer since the 1970s. Here are descriptions of some of their innovations.

1970 & 1974

The ball used for the 1970 and 1974 World Cup was the Telstar, the first white football ever to be painted with black pentagons which became synonymous with football throughout the world.

1978 & 1982

The famous Adidas Tango design was introduced for the 1978 World Cup, and used again in 1982.

1986

The ball for the 1986 World Cup, the Adidas Azteca, was the world's first fully synthetic football.

1990

The Adidas Etrusco Unico, the official ball in 1990, in addition to being fully produced with synthetic materials, was also completely water resistant.

1994

Adidas introduced the first official match ball featuring a high tech ultra high energy-return layer of white polyethylene foam, giving a greater performance ball.

1998

The ball used in 1998, the Adidas Tricolore, was the first ever multi-colored official match ball.

2002

The official ball of the World Cup in 2002 was the Fevernova. It featured a refined syntactic foam layer to give the ball superior performance characteristics.

2006

The official ball in Germany 2006 is the Teamgeist again designed by Adidas. This ball incorporates a figure-8 design for each ball segment, which results in less joins and therefore more flat area so that a foot strike is more likely to hit a soft point on the ball.

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