How soccer ball materials have evolved

As the FIFA World Cup approaches, excitement among fans—and materials scientists—is building. Whether you call it football or soccer (C&EN staff use both), all eyes are on the players. But what can be lost in the action is the chemistry and materials science that goes into crafting the perfect football.

The way the ball feels, flies, curves, rebounds, and retains shape during a game is influenced by more than its size and the amount of air inside. The materials used to make the ball’s main components—the bladder, lining, and shell—play a big role, as do the number of shell panels, the dimensions of the seams, and surface texture.

Primitive balls were made of leather-wrapped pig bladders. “When vulcanization of rubber came along with Charles Goodyear in 1839 . . . the bladder could be made more uniform, which allowed standardization of the game,” says Ieuan Phillips of Loughborough University’s Sports Technology Institute.

Before Adidas became the official supplier of World Cup footballs in 1970, host countries provided their own handcrafted balls, which varied in size and shape. Now a group known as the International Football Association Board governs the ball’s properties, Phillips says, but manufacturers have “quite a lot of design freedom to vary the materials.”

See how the ball materials have changed to help athletes achieve their best and make the beautiful game more exciting.

PANEL 1

1970–85

The classic black-and-white soccer balls had shells made of 32 hand-stitched leather panels. Leather is hydrophilic and absorbs water, so balls would get heavier as matches progressed. The 1974 ball got a Durlast polyurethane coating to make it water-resistant and more durable. Water still seeped into the seams, so future models added wax to the seams to cut water uptake.

The outer shell panels were glued to a cotton textile lining that reduced the non-uniform stretch of leather. Bladders were made of natural latex rubber, chemically known as cis-1,4-polyisoprene. Latex has flexible polymer chains that aren’t densely packed, allowing air to escape during play, which means balls must be reinflated frequently. But it is softer and rebounds easily off players’ feet, making it feel alive.

PANEL 2

1986–99

The 1986 World Cup football was the first made entirely of synthetic materials and synthetic blends. Its shell had an outer coating and multiple inner foam layers all made of polyurethane. The lining was a polyester-cotton textile. The ball was markedly more durable and waterproof than its predecessors and returned to its original shape better after deforming on impact.

All of this meant more-consistent and more-predictable play—and that synthetics were here to stay. Subsequent balls added more layers of textiles, foams, and adhesives.

PANEL 3

2000–2005

Key changes to football materials came in the early 2000s. The 2002 World Cup ball’s shell was composed of a syntactic foam based on polyurethane made by Bayer MaterialScience (now Covestro), while the liner was a tightly knit fabric made of synthetic polyester and nylon.

Syntactic foam is composed of equal-size, durable, and highly elastic gas-filled microbubbles. It was meant to create a more predictable flight path. But it also translated to a ball that was too light, according to some players, who blamed it for losses.

PANEL 4

2005–15

The 2006 ball broke from the traditional 32-panel construction, going down to 14. It was also the first to be thermally bonded: heat-activated adhesive fused the shell panels to one another and to the inner polyester liner. The materials used in the shell and adhesives were all based on polyurethane made by Bayer MaterialScience. The seamless surface gave a nearly perfectly spherical ball that was more waterproof than its predecessors. The 2010 ball marked the advent of a textured surface to improve aerodynamic performance.

Inner layers also became more high-tech in this era. The 2014 ball had a latex bladder covered with a few layers of nylon fabric surrounded by two different layers of polyurethane foam—one with open cells and another with closed cells— and two fiber-reinforced composite layers, all encased in a polyurethane shell made of just six panels. All the layers were thermally bonded together.

PANEL 5

2016–22

The official 2018 World Cup ball said goodbye to latex bladders. Beneath its six polyurethane outer panels and several nylon lining layers was a bladder made of isobutylene isoprene, also called butyl rubber. The elastomer’s densely packed polymer chains don’t let gas molecules diffuse easily, so it holds air better than latex does. Butyl bladders make balls feel firmer, requiring higher kick force but offering more control. For the next World Cup, in 2022, Adidas pushed for sustainability with the use of water-based inks and glues.

Materials innovations happen outside the World Cup too. Nike, which was the official ball supplier for the English Premier League for 25 years, uses a process called ultrasonic fuse welding to bond layers of different materials together. High-frequency mechanical vibrations create molecular bonds without the need for heat or adhesives.

PANEL 6

2026

That brings us to this year’s World Cup ball, the Trionda, which has only four shell panels. A low total seam length along with stitchless thermal bonding makes for an exceptionally smooth ball surface that can, contrary to intuition, make the ball’s trajectory unpredictable and reduce its range in the air if it is kicked without spin. To make up for the smoothness, the Trionda has intentionally deep seams, three deep grooves on each panel, and fine surface texturing.

A motion-sensor chip embedded in one of the four panels relays real-time data to a video assistant referee system for faster decisions. Adidas has added weight across the three other panels for balance.

The humble football has, over the decades, become a marvel of materials science and engineering, and there’s no doubt it will continue to evolve as the passion for the game continues. The outcome of this year’s FIFA World Cup is much less certain.

Prachi Patel is a senior editor and physical sciences reporter at C&EN based in Pittsburgh.