Greater shooting accuracy and acceleration

“+Teamgeist™” World Cup Soccer Ball – Always Good for a Surprise or Two

“It is the fastest ball we have ever had.”

adidas has supplied the ball for the soccer World Cup for 36 years now. The company is consistently innovative, as this year’s ‘+Teamgeist™’ ball shows. Bayer MaterialScience has played a major role in the development and production of this new ball.

Portugal, Summer 2004: Millions of spectators in the stadiums and in front of their TV screens are at fever pitch as they follow the progress of their teams in the European Soccer Championships. One of them is André Pechtold. Unlike most of the fans, however, he is more occupied with watching how the players get to grips with the ball than rooting for his team. Not surprising really because, as the project manager for technical development at adidas, he played a key role in the development of the Roteiro™, the ball used at the European Championships in 2004.

Yet even as the Roteiro™ was being kicked about in the Portuguese stadiums, Pechtold was thinking two years on – to the World Cup 2006. After all, not only does adidas have a contract with the European Football Association, UEFA, it is also a partner of the world football association, FIFA. Since 1970, the company has designed the balls for every World Cup, and it has always managed to come up with an innovation of some kind. The ‘Tango España’ in 1982, for example, was the first ball to have sealed water-tight seams.

Fewer sections – greater shooting accuracy and acceleration

In 2006, too, the company was once again expected to develop something new, which is why the adidas innovation team (a.i.t.) headed by André Pechtold began thinking about how to further optimize the Roteiro™ even before the 2004 European Championships got under way. The team decided to concentrate on the ball’s outer skin, and to take a fresh look at the age-old structure of 20 five-sided and 12 six-sided sections because it had always had a small drawback. Pechtold explains: “The surface of the ball has 60 points where three seams come together. If a player hits precisely one of these points when he kicks the ball, the ball will react slightly differently than when he strikes a point that is absolutely smooth.” This can lead to a slight loss of accuracy and affect the ball’s acceleration.

Ball instinct - each in his own way: Thomas Michaelis (left), who is responsible at Bayer MaterialScience for technical marketing, textile coatings, and André Pechtold, project manager, technical development, at adidas.

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Ball instinct – each in his own way: Thomas Michaelis (left), who is responsible at Bayer MaterialScience for technical marketing, textile coatings, and André Pechtold, project manager, technical development, at adidas.

“We considered how we could reduce the number of these points of intersection,” says the experienced engineer. It did not take the team long to come up with the answer: instead of 32 pentagons and hexagons, the new ball is made up of only 14 sections. The adidas designers have shaped these sections to look like propellers and turbines, symbolizing motion. When they are joined together, there are only 24 points of intersection. “This means the surface has become far more homogeneous,” Pechtold says.

Fewer sections also mean a reduction in the total length of the bonded joins (the skin has been bonded and not sewn since 2002). “This has had a positive effect on the ball’s flight characteristics,” says Pechtold, a fact confirmed by numerous laboratory tests. The robo-test, in which an automated artificial leg shoots the ball at a target with constant force, is one of them. With the new ball, the scatter range of the flight path was a third smaller than with its predecessors.

“It is the fastest ball we have ever had.”

Apart from improved precision, the +Teamgeist™ – as the new ball is called – boasts another superlative. “It is the fastest ball we have ever had,” says Pechtold and explains why: “Because of the smaller number of points of intersection, the ball can deform more homogeneously at the moment it is kicked, enabling it to absorb the energy more effectively and convert it into flight speed.”

Whether in Milan, Marseilles, Amsterdam or Nuremberg, closer to home, players everywhere have reacted positively to the +Teamgeist™ during the testing phase. Even the goalkeepers have given it good marks, some of them saying they could catch the ball more easily. And they will certainly need to if the forwards can now shoot more accurately and faster.

The plastic of choice: Impranil®

Production-line manufacture, in which many partners are involved, began in 2005. One of the partners supplies the latex bladder for the inner core, others the parts for the glass fiber carcass that gives the ball its shape and stability. In the final stage of production, the innovative skin made up of the 14 propeller and turbine sections is bonded onto this carcass. Plastic took over from leather for the outer skin in 1986. “Leather gets saturated with water,” says Pechtold, highlighting one of the major disadvantages of the natural product.

Cross-section: Instead of 32 five- and six-sided sections, the new ball is made of only 14 sections shaped like propellers and turbines. When joined together, this produces only 24 points of intersection instead of 60 as before, resulting in better flight properties.

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Cross-section: Instead of 32 five- and six-sided sections, the new ball is made of only 14 sections shaped like propellers and turbines. When joined together, this produces only 24 points of intersection instead of 60 as before, resulting in better flight properties.

The plastic of choice has proved to be polyurethane from Bayer. Polyurethane has good abrasion resistance, tensile strength, tear resistance and weather resistance, is extremely elastic and only becomes brittle at high temperatures. Under the name Impranil, Bayer has been marketing polyurethane coatings for the textile industry for several decades. It was first used in soccer balls at the World Cup in 1986. Since then, Bayer has been a permanent partner of adidas.

And development marches on. “We have always adapted our polyurethane systems to meet the demands of the adidas balls,” explains Thomas Michaelis, who is responsible at Bayer MaterialScience for technical marketing in the field of textile coatings. That was also the case with the +Teamgeist™. “When the idea of the new skin structure was raised in 2004, we immediately produced the first prototypes on our laminating machine in Leverkusen,” says Michaelis, describing the close cooperation with the a.i.t. Another new aspect with the +Teamgeist™ was that the print on the ball was, for the first time, coated with a polyurethane layer in order to “prevent the design on the surface from being rubbed off,” says Michaelis. All in all, the skin is made up of four different layers of Impranil – each with different functions and properties. In total, the four-layer system is 1.1 mm thick.

The public experienced the +Teamgeist™ for the first time in December 2005 at the celebrations to mark the drawing of the groups for this year’s World Cup. Since then, it has been available to buy. adidas wants to sell 10 million balls. André Pechtold and his colleagues will, of course, be watching closely to see whether the World Cup players really can hit the polyurethane ball more accurately and faster. The team’s minds are, as is to be expected, another two years on – at the European Championships 2008. Then, once again, adidas will come up with a new ball with some other new feature. But what could possibly be improved? Pechtold grins: “We’ve got a few ideas already.”