All of the World Cup Balls 1930-2010

Here’s a gallery of all of the balls used at FIFA World Cups from the beginning. (H/T Metafilter).

The top row of the gallery contains the kind of footballs that would have been familiar both to participants in friendlies in the 1960s and British schoolboys ninety years later.

Row 2 contains what my generation might consider the Ur-ball, the Adidas Telstar, father of a million hollow plastic replicas. A couple of months of being kicked up against a brick wall would take off that clean black-and-white and leave the basic leather exposed, but the panel pattern would still show through.

The most recent footballs – the aerodynamic, waterproof serious pieces of sporting kit – are the ones that look most transient, temporary and liable to break. You could say the same for today’s boots. Odd that the footballs and the football boots look least like their ancient forebears just at the time when shirts, shorts and socks have gone back – on the surface at least – to a bagginess Billy Wright might have recognised and his Hungarian opponents rejected.