In 1962 Eigil Nielsen created the first 32-panel football. The Danish footballer, who represented his country at the 1948 Summer Olympics, used 20 hexagonal patches and 12 pentagonal pieces of material to manufacture the ball.
Despite Nielsen's Select Sport company still producing balls using the same structure, the versions used in most professional leagues have moved on. The Adidas Telstar ball that will be used in this summer's World Cup, for example, has just six panels.
Step forward Nike. Its ball for the 2018-2019 Premier League season brings down the number of panels even further. "Footballs used to all be hand-stitched," says Kieran Ronan, general manager of global equipment at the firm. Now, thanks to new high frequency welding techniques, it's possible to create a ball with just four panels. The Nike Merlin, as it is known, will be used in the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A.
The Merlin name has been used before by Nike, which initially introduced it as the moniker for the 2000 Premier League ball. That one had 32 panels. For Ronan, reducing the number of panels helps reduce wobbling as it flies.
"If you're to turn the ball inside out when you've got a 32-panel hand-stitched, you will see a large amount of excess fabric inside," he says, describing the seams of the joints. "The outside almost looks like the inside on the modern ball."
There is a "cleaner flight, far higher degree of accuracy" with the four-panel ball, Ronan explains. The ball has 40 per cent fewer seams than Nike's last models. To test the Merlin, Nike used robotic legs with boots attached and a computer modelling system to analyse its flight.
And the ball's development team is already working on new models – which could mean even less panels. "Does a triangle cut work when you put it into a round surface?" Ronan says. "We're going to keep playing with all the different angles."
The company says the Merlin is its first football to have a latex bladder, rather than rubber. This, Ronan says, helps it to maintain a consistent air pressure. The new ball also has 3D printed inks on its outside that help it to move through the air, much like the dimples on a golf ball.
Among the myriad of tests completed on the Merlin, Nike also tested the sound of the ball. "99 times out of 100 they [players] can't tell you [what they want]," Ronan says. Unless you ask them about how the ball should sound, that is. "There's a sound linked to the feel. People will just know what that is instinctively." A sound room within the firm's laboratories is used to check if each strike of the ball creates the correct sound.
As well as developing the new ball, Nike has also created a new glove for goalkeepers. Instead of being covered by a range of straps and different components, each glove is just one piece. Nike says there is a 66 per cent reduction in the number of parts and the new glove is 33 per cent lighter.
"When we look at the traditional glove, which has effectively been around for the best part of 30 years, it hasn't evolved and it reduces the dexterity of the keeper," Ronan says. The new one-piece gusset doesn't just stop at a keeper's wrist but continues slightly up the arm. What do players who have tested say when first see the new design? "This is different," Ronan jokes. "But there's usually an expletive that goes in before that."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
