AS SURE AS night following day, and England disappointing at a major tournament, you can bet there will be some hand-wringing and moaning about the World Cup football this summer.
Adidas have been responsible for making the official ball since Mexico 70 and this image shows how the design has changed and evolved over the years.
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The first four balls were made from leather before the fully synthetic ‘Azteca’ was introduced for Mexico 86.
Since then there have been a number of improvements using fancy-sounding materials like “hi-tech PU foam”, “syntactic foam” and “3-D spherically formed EVA and PU panels… moulded together, harmoniously enveloping the inner carcass.”
It’s a football, lads. They kick it into the goal. Spare us the waffle.
Look at all the World Cup warm-up games Setanta / BT Sport are showing
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