New shapes for soccer balls
Now that the World Cup is over, it’s time for me to tell you that a soccer ball doesn’t need to be spherical. With the help of Ivars Peterson in his last Math Trek column, “Bending a Soccer Ball,” let’s see how the FIFA soccer balls used between 1970 and 2006 […]

Bending a Soccer Ball
Ivars Peterson
Since about 1970, soccer balls have been stitched or glued together from 32 patches of material—12 of them five-sided and 20 of them six-sided. These patches are arranged so that each pentagon is surrounded by hexagons. Traditionally, the pentagons are colored black and the hexagons white.

A truncated icosahedron (left) […]

Soccer ball Story
Dimensions The ball used in football (soccer) is called a football (or soccer ball). Law 2 of the game specifies that the soccer ball is an air-filled sphere with a circumference of 68–70 cm (or 27–28 inches), a weight of 410–450 g (or 14–16 ounces), inflated to a pressure of 60–110 kPa […]

History of the Game
More than 2000 Years of Football
By Dr. Wilfried Gerhardt
Press Officer for the German Football Association, Frankfurt/Main, Germany.

The contemporary history of football spans more than 100 years. It all began in 1863 in England, when rugby football and association football branched off on their different courses and the world’s first […]