Tim Howard of Everton scores from 100+ yards away in today’s loss to Bolton Wanderers. On the upside though, he now has more goals in 2012 than the entire Manchester United team. (Sorry to you United supporters, but it’s just too easy right now).
Selected footballs from Jens Heilmann’s “The World Cup Balls” collection, which traces the evolution of the football/soccer ball from 1930 to 2010.
1930: Uruguay vs. Argentina, Model-T.
1934: Italy vs. Spain, Federale 102.
(no World Cups were held between 1938-1946 because of World War II.)
1954: West Germany vs. Hungary, Swiss WC Match Ball (FIFA begins regulating the size, weight, and diameter of balls this year).
1962: Czechoslovakia vs. Yugoslavia, Mr. Crack.
1966: England vs. West Germany, Challenge 4-Star.
1970: Italy vs. West Germany, Telstar Durlast.
1974: West Germany vs. Poland, Telstar Durlast.
1986: France vs. Italy, Azteca Mexico.
1994: United States, Questra.
2002: France vs. Uruguay, Fevernova.
2010: Spain vs. the Netherlands, Jabulani.All the rest of the World Cup balls may be seen here. Excerpt from “How Footballs Became Magic”, on the origins of the project:
“Wouldn’t it be fascinating, he thought to himself, to have a sequence of identical graphic forms? Initial internet searches on footballs showed only horridly photographed stuff. Moreover, there was only scant information about the originals. Apparently, when it came to football, the world was only interested in goals and artistic over-head kicks, in saved penalties and vicious fouls, in posing winners and fallen idols. Pelé and Beckham, Beckenbauer and Valdano, Rossi and Puskás – all at the centre of attention in all the football albums and photo galleries. But this shapely plaything, the single item they all fight over passionately, the one thing players sometime caress ever so softly and other times kick viciously into high heavens… gets simply ignored.”
