What a Kick: Soccer's High-Tech Innovations

Companies guard the specifics of innovations like state secrets. Nike declined to talk about its soccer balls.

John Stevenson, Puma's North American vice president and general manager for performance sports, says competitors buy each other's products and take them apart. "Do we want to know what our competitors are doing? Absolutely," he says. "Ball technology and evolution is not dissimilar to the car industry."

As with sports cars, soccer has inspired artists and graphic designers, many of whose works are compiled in a new book, "Play Loud!" (Die Gestalten). The Japanese Web site Pingmag.jp extols the virtues of soccer culture, from ball-themed chocolates to runway fashions, including Dirk Bikkemberg's ball-inspired handbag. Sporting-goods companies have been known to roll with aesthetics, too. Puma's "camo" ball is overprinted with grass, just for fun.

Before technology entered the game, soccer balls were little more than bulky leather blobs. Cowhide withstood the punishment of up to 2,000 kicks a game but did not stay round and gained weight in the rain.

Television came to the rescue in the late 1960s. The Federation Internationale de Football Association realized that viewers wouldn't be able to see a plain ball on a black-and-white screen. For the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, Adidas created Telstar in the style of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome. Ball makers have applied different decals, improved the bladder and switched synthetics. But the classic design survived. Adidas launched a truly high-tech ball at the 2002 World Cup. Fevernova had gas-filled cells embedded in foam to impart bigger bounce. For the 2004 European championship, designers dreamed up a seamless, heat-bonded ball. Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon declared it "worse" than the Fevernova.

Fans bought 6 million Fevernovas. With double that for the Teamgeist, Adidas is entitled to laugh all the way to the bank.

One innovation did not make the cut. This year, Adidas hoped to embed a wireless microchip in the ball to relay data to a watch worn by referees. A plan to wire the players' shin guards also was set aside, leaving in the speculative zone such minutiae as how hard superstar Beckham kicks.

So how much do exotic balls and shoes contribute to the outcome of the game? Huckel is unequivocal.

"Neither is more important than the player," he says. "It's a poor workman that blames his tools."