adidas and Bayer MaterialScience team up to ... - Bayercoatings.com

adidas and Bayer MaterialScience team up to develop the FIFA World Cup ball
Rounder than ever before
High-tech "+Teamgeist" ball for the biggest sports event of 2006
Leverkusen – "We are facing a task that is equivalent at least to the squaring of the circle if not to the
sphering of the cube." This was how Angela Merkel, Germany's first Federal Chancellor, described the
difficult tasks facing her Government weeks ago. The challenge facing adidas and Bayer MaterialScience
– one of the biggest plastics producers in the world – in developing the soccer ball for the FIFA World
Cup 2006 in Germany was equally daunting. The aim of the project was to make what is, by definition, a
round soccer ball even rounder and even better for the biggest sports event in the world in 2006. What
has come out of it all, after a long period of intensive joint development work, is a truly high-tech product
that answers to the name "+Teamgeist".
The word translates into English as "Team Spirit", and could equally be applied to the many years of
outstanding cooperation between adidas and Bayer. "We developed the first all-synthetic ball together for
the World Cup in Mexico in 1986. Since then, we have produced a new model for every World Cup and
European Championships," explains Thomas Michaelis, Project Manager for ball development at Bayer
MaterialScience. "We spent three years working on this black, white and yellow ball. They were three
years of outstanding teamwork, involving many other companies throughout the world." Materials
research, design and production took place simultaneously on several continents. At the end of it all, the
successful team achieved something that the former German International, Andreas Brehme, once
described as: "Making the impossible possible is a sheer impossibility."
At the beginning of the project, adidas drew up a clear list of detailed and demanding specifications.
Michaelis: "With every new ball, adidas tells us exactly what it wants in
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terms of design and performance. This time the aim was to make the ball even rounder and to maintain
its attractive appearance over a long time." But how round is round? Finding an answer to that question is
not quite as easy as the former Hungarian International, Gyula Lorant, once put it: "The ball is round. If it
had corners, it would be a cube."
Round is relative. The "+Teamgeist" is just one percent away from being a perfect sphere. This makes
it particularly accurate as it travels through the air. It is all down to the materials used to make it and the
innovative construction. For the first time, the adidas specialists have thrown out the familiar five and six-
sided sections to which we have been accustomed over the last few decades and replaced them with
propeller-shaped panels. They have also reduced the total number of sections from 32 to 14. Fewer
edges and more roundness also means fewer seams and corners in the outer skin so that when the
players kick the ball, there is a greater chance that they will make contact with a smooth surface. This
increases their chances of hitting the target.
The keep the ball in shape, Bayer’s coating specialists developed a new structure for the outer skin. To
begin with, they increased the wall thickness of the ball to 1.1 millimeters to make it rounder and
smoother. They also used their experience in shoe development. In the end, they decided to use four
different layers of material placed one on top of the other. The decisive component in ensuring an
accurate trajectory of the "+Teamgeist" is the polyurethane-based syntactic foam, which is applied to
an adhesive layer that bonds the outer skin to the textile substrate. The foam consists of millions of gas-
filled microspheres. "This ensures that the ball quickly returns to its original round shape after becoming
deformed when kicked, and it is this that gives it an optimum trajectory," says Thomas Michaelis. Above
the foam layer, the ball has an aliphatic intermediate coat to protect it from external influences such as
moisture, and give it exceptional elasticity. Consequently, the only thing that will stop an accurate shot at
goal from Ballack, Beckham & Co. from reaching its destination is one of the opposing players getting in
the way.
Finally, the ball's outer finish protects the printed surface from abrasion. It makes for greater durability
and gives it a perfect appearance over a long period. The "+Teamgeist" still gleams like new when the
teams leave the pitch exhausted and filthy after a hard match. The material, which is also frequently used
as a surface layer in the fashion industry, comes from Bayer MaterialScience's Impranil ® range. In
addition to this, "+Teamgeist" (like two of its predecessors) is no longer stitched but bonded with a
patented thermal adhesive coat. The result is that, even in heavy rain, the ball gains scarcely any weight
(at most 0.1 %). The era of water-saturated leather balls is definitively over. This one is virtually waterimpermeable.
"It’s incredible how much development and material research has gone into it. I always thought you just
pumped air into the ball and that was that," said Rudi Völler, a member of the World Cup winning team of
1990, former boss of the German national team and currently Sporting Director of Bayer 04 Leverkusen.
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He was quite amazed when he visited the research and development laboratory at Bayer's plant in
Leverkusen to take a closer look. Soccer icon David Beckham captain of the England team, is also
impressed: "The ball goes exactly where you want it to go." German international, Bernd Schneider,
endorses Beckham's comment: "With this ball you can put in perfect crosses for your forwards. And for
me as free-kick specialist, it means I can curl the ball round the wall with amazing accuracy."
It will be interesting to see which team learns first to get the most out of the innovative ball. If you want to
find out in an entertaining way how soccer balls have developed over the decades into a high-tech item
of sports equipment, visit www.tor.bayerbms.com – and perhaps win an original World Cup ball, too.
Leverkusen, March 2006
dre (2006-0103e)
Contact at Bayer MaterialScience:
Gerd Dressen, Tel.: +49 214 30-66204, Fax: +49 214 30-33779
E-mail: gerhard-johannes.dressen@bayerbms.com
Internet:www.bayermaterialscience.com
You will find plenty of information and pictures online at
www.press.bayerbms.com
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