The History of the Football

The history of footballs is one surrounded in a mist of questionable facts and legends, which makes it hard for anyone to say for certain how the football ball evolved throughout time.

As legend has it, football started in a rather grim setting during the middle ages. In Europe and more specifically, in England, the first forms of "mob football" were played after public executions, when the head of the poor victim was thrown in the crowd and the mob started kicking it aggressively. With a lot of executions being performed during that period in England, it is easy to understand why the Brits took this sport as their own. Still, leaving legend aside, let's pass on to the fact-based history of soccer balls.

Since the history of the football game can be traced back to ancient times, it's quite clear that the footballs used back then were improvisations made out of daily used materials. The Aztecs used small, bouncy rubber balls in their basketball-football game of hoop kicking, whereas Chinese warriors would often enjoy a game of no-rules football using sewn up leather balls stuffed with light materials.

However, leather footballs were a luxury those days (who would spare a fine piece of leather for some silly game, when it could have been used for clothing, making bags out of or using it in armors?).
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The most common type of football in ancient times, at least in Europe and Asia, was made out of animal bladder. Since pigs were the most common source of food for winter sustenance, their bladders were often extracted, cleaned, inflated and kicked around.
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Although pig-bladder football balls were quite resistant, they were extremely light and could not have been used for more than a simple game of "hold the ball in the air", so calling them "footballs" is an overstatement at best.

Good thing that particular sport did not evolve or we would still be playing soccer with balloons. When someone, somewhere had the idea to use stuffed leather in order to create a kicking object, we could very well state that it meant the start of a new era in the history of football balls and the football game.
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Leather balls were harder, more controllable and more durable, although not as elastic as the rubber balls used in the Americas. However one of the biggest problems of that period's soccer balls, be they made of leather, rubber or bladder, was that they were highly irregular in shape and size, which made them less controllable.
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In 1836, Charles Goodyear did us all a favor and patented vulcanized rubber and although his invention was to be used in more important areas at that time, it also helped taking the history of footballs one step forward, with the introduction of the first vulcanized rubber footballs (which were also designed by Goodyear, reportedly a fan of the game) in 1855.

From 1855 until today, the history of the football game evolved tremendously and so did its "work object", which evolved more in a century than it did in the entire history of footballs prior to this period.
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Modern technology and the exponentially rising popularity and financial strength of football all worked together in bringing state-of-the-art super soccer balls and taking the history of footballs one step further.
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We could say that the trend was always renewed each four years, with the introduction of a new World Cup football ball. It has been almost a tradition to have a new and improved football at each World Cup, each with its own characteristics.
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For example, the World Cup footballs used in 2002 in Korea and Japan were lighter than those used as standard before and made out of a material that would be more controllable, favoring technically skilled players and thus, rising the entertainment value.
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In 2006 at the Germany World Cup, a new football was introduced, which sparked the anger of many, including veteran Oliver Kahn the German keeper.
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The football, as Kahn and many other keepers would notice, is "built in favor of the striker" meaning that it has several characteristics that make shots stay on the ground and thus, having more chances to hit the goal.
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On the other side of the fence, many strikers stated that the 2006 World Cup football was extremely comfortable to shoot and that it did not have the usual unintentional mid-air swerve that most other balls had. Some would say that is what the beautiful game needs more of ?....... Goals!

Will the 2010 world cup ball be different again or has technology reached it's peak?