Today, the soccer ball is one of the world’s most easily identified objects thanks to the billions of soccer fans that can be found throughout the globe. The soccer ball has a long and interesting history that dates back thousands of years, although these are quite different to the balls that we use in modern tournaments. For any soccer lover out there, this is the history of the soccer ball and why it’s remained so popular.
Origins of The Ball
Historians have found evidence to suggest that proto-soccer balls were made use of by a number of ancient cultures, including the Chinese, Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks. Almost all accounts are of teams or individuals kicking a makeshift ball, and it’s always been a community game, where the entire village would get involved. The original balls were made from a combination of animal skin and gut, which would usually not last more than a few games at a time but was easy enough to put together.
Fortunately, that’s a far cry from the soccer balls of today’s age of smartphones and https://onlinegamblingcasino.co.nz/ sites, which are made with synthetic materials and can last much longer.
How It Evolved
The soccer ball that we know today wouldn’t come around until 1855 and was invented by Charles Goodyear. His creation was made almost entirely out of vulcanized rubber and was covered in panels similar to modern basketballs. Before Goodyear’s invention, the ball was made from a pig’s bladder, meaning that the shape was privy to the shape of the bladder itself, which made for some truly weirdly shaped balls, and often didn’t go where the player intended it to go.
Some years later, H. J. Lindon would improve the design, creating an inflatable rubber bladder that made it much easier for the players to kick, and was able to endure a number of games before it eventually lost its shape.
Officiating The Soccer Ball
The English Football Association, in 1872, decided to give the ball an official size and weight, who described the ball as spherical with a circumference of 28 inches. This description stuck for decades, and was changed very little until 1937, when it had a small weight increase. Further laws were added later on, such as having the ball possess an outer layer of approved materials to keep its shape and give it extra durability. Once the official description had been put into place, it wasn’t long before the soccer ball was part of the game and was beginning to be mass produced.
High quality materials were required to keep the balls in good shape, and it meant that producers would be held to fairly high standards, even for the day. Covers started seeing improvement as manufacturers constantly sought better materials to keep the balls protected.
For the most part, the only real changes that have taken place since these rules were signed in are the materials that are used to create the balls, which have changed frequently over the years.
