A Story of Footballs in 30 Episodes, Part Two
As the game itself became increasingly beholden to television, so the needs of the medium became more important than would have even been thought conceivable just a decade earlier.
The first part of this series took us from the 15th century to the middle of the 1960s. By this time, football was starting to change. Television was starting to dictate the decisions made within the game itself, and by the 1980s being the ‘official’ ball mattered. Numbers 20-11 take us from the late 1950s to the late 1980s.
20. Mitre Multiplex
Of all the footballs on this list, the Multiplex is probably the one with the least airs or graces. This beast of a ball was the king of Sunday leagues. An 18-panel ball with the properties of concrete when fully inflated, the Multiplex wasn’t that often used in the professional games—professional clubs preferred the 25-panel Max, which divided its original 18 panels up into smaller rectangular ones—but its relatively affordable price and frankly supernatural durability made it a favourite among smaller clubs who wanted their equipment to last.
By the late 1960s, Mitre had a bewildering variety of plain white footballs. The Max was the favoured ball of some bigger clubs, while the Multiplex was stinging the hell out of the inner thighs of hungover men the length and breadth of the nation. But you also had to add the ‘Permawhite’, which promised to stay white no matter how many times it was used on a pitch with the physical properties of a waterlogged cabbage patch.
This was not a promise that could be made by the Multiplex, which had a tendency to start turning brown after a couple of games in the mud. But their visual deterioration was seldom matched by a physical one, even when bits of the casing started to chip off. The Multiplex has now been discontinued, a moment which seems to have gone unremarked upon in the media. Shame on us all.
(This is probably also the time to briefly mention that other ‘stalwart’ plain white balls are available, perhaps most notably the Minerva Supreme, which was first produced in Wood Green in North London in the 1960s and continued to be used until the early 1990s - this company was operating out of a business park near St Albans in Hertfordshire, but their Facebook page hasn’t been updated in five years and their website, which is no longer active, was last updated in 2015.)
The (even more) sadistic cousin of the Multiplex was the Mouldmaster, the scourge of PE lessons across the country for more than forty years. Covered in small dimples which seemed laser-designed to redden any match of skin they came across, the Mouldmaster’s key selling point was its durability. These things, let us not forget, were strong enough to resist the sort of consistent use required for hours every week.
The Mouldmaster essentially had two settings. Fully inflated, it occupied a space roughly halfway between a cannonball and a bouncy ball, creating a satisfyingly metallic twanging sound if bounced on concrete. But remove so much as a breath of air from it and the entire edifice would come collapsing in on itself. Favoured by the sort of schoolmaster who enjoyed taking you out in the pouring rain while standing on the touchline in a warm anorak. Not that I’m still bitter about it, or anything.
The Mouldmaster was discontinued in 2015.
The rise of the municipal sports centre in the 1960s brought with it a need for a football that could be used indoors which could retain as many of the properties of a match ball without smashing as many windows or lightbulbs or creating the sort of racket that would make it sound to people in the swimming pool as though the gymnasium was the scene of a wild west shootout, and which had a little less bounce to it. Unlike those mentioned above, the Mitre Indoor Ultimatch (if nothing else, Mitre are the undisputed kings of confusing naming structures) is still made to this day. Clearly the need for a durable ball for indoor use remains as high as ever. Other manufacturers of indoor footballs are available.
17. Adidas Telstar & Telstar Durlast
I talked about the arrival of the 32-panel football in part one of this series, at the hands of the Select Sports company in Denmark. Based on Richard Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome, the formal name for which is a truncated icosahedron, the idea soon caught on, and after the 1966 World Cup Adidas threw their hat into this particular ring for the 1968 European Championships in Italy, though it would be their use at the 1970 and 1974 World Cups that would really cement their reputation.
The ball took its name, of course, from the Telstar satellite, which had been first launched just a few weeks after the 1962 World Cup final in Chile. The black and white panels were introduced to aid visibility on black and white televisions, where even a plain white ball could get lost on a fuzzy, light grey background. The solar panels on the satellite gave the two a similar visual appearance as well. The name ‘Telstar’ for the satellite itself was a truncation of 'the star of television'.
It’s surprising, how stingy Adidas seem to have been with these balls for the 1970 World Cup. They only provided 20 Telstars for the entire tournament, with the Chile—a plain white equivalent—used as well. Some venues seemed to run out sooner than others. Four matches in Leon took place with orange balls, including England’s ill-fated quarter-final against West Germany. When the Chile in use for the ‘Match of the Century’ semi-final between Italy and West Germany at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City deflated twenty minutes in, it was swapped out for a Telstar.
Four years later in West Germany, the Telstar Durlast and Chile Durlast were in use. ‘Durlast’ was the name given to a new polyurethane coating that made the balls more water-resistant and hard-wearing. Good job, too, since this tournament was played in pouring rain to the point that a couple of matches were almost called off because the pitches were borderline unplayable.
The Telstar was also used as the official ball of the 1972 and 1976 European Championships, but it was replaced for the 1978 World Cup finals in Argentina. Strangely, although its use was common across Europe, it never seems to have been used by professional clubs in England, but for all this—and even though its lifespan lasted just a decade—the Telstar remains arguably the definitive football. Ask someone to think of a football and the chances are that this is the one that they’ll think of first, even it’s barely been seen on a pitch in almost half a century (and no, the occasional reboots of it don’t count) and essentially never (I’m aware that in the age of perpetual nostalgia it has made the occasional cameo appearance) in this country. Fortunately, the Telstar design was replaced by something even better.
By the early 1970s, the white ball had almost completed its takeover. The FA Cup final to be played with one was in 1969 between Manchester City and Leicester City. This remained the case for the next three years (including a replay in 1970), but in 1973 a yellow ball was used for the first time since 1968 and, as it turned out, the last. But why should this be?
It was a modern 32-panel design ball, and there are conflicting stories as to how it came to be used. There has been a persistent rumour that it is supposed to be a shade of gold, to mark the official opening of Wembley exactly 50 years earlier. But it has also been suggested that the referee just picked it up from a pile before the match. The next time the ball used for the FA Cup final would be any other colour would be in 2014. Orange balls would only come to be used when the pitch was covered in snow from now on.
15. The North American Soccer League Ball
To television viewers abroad who happened to catch glimpses of it on its rare appearances, it looked a little like football from the future. With cheerleaders, artificial playing surface, mildly re-jigged rules and brightly coloured kits, the North American Soccer League looked like no version of football ever seen before. And its balls, a Telstar design with a red star on a blue background on the panels which would otherwise have been black, were arguably the greatest cultural legacy that it left behind.
The NASL had a fairly humble introduction in December 1967, after a merger of the United Soccer Association, motley collection of European club sides—Wolves, Sunderland and Stoke City travelled from England—had cosplayed as American clubs the previous summer, and another newly-formed league, the National Professional Soccer League. This new league took a while to build up a head of steam, but by the time it featured on the front cover of Sports Illustrated in 1973 it was starting to pick up interest.
But the catalyst for its brief explosion of popularity was the arrival of Pele at New York Cosmos in 1975. And at the same time a new ball arrived to be used across the league. Made by Adidas and Wilson (one for the Castaway fans, there), this ball, with its unabashed gaudiness, was a perfect visual representative for this brave new world. Giorgio Chinaglia, Johan Cruyff, Johan Neeskens, Gerd Müller, Bobby Moore, Eusébio, and George Best were among those who would take advantage of the money on offer. The ball design stayed in use until the league—the teams involved were all franchised—collapsed in on itself in March 1985 after several years of horrendous financial losses.
14. Adidas Tango River Plate and Espana
The Adidas Telstar, as used in the 1970 and 1974 World Cups, was a star that shone brightly, but not for very long. Its successor, on the other hand, managed to hang around for the next twenty-odd years and has had one unsuccessful reboot since then. The Adidas Tango was designed for the 1978 finals, with its first version coming under two names, the Tango Durlast (repeating the naming given to the 1974 ball on account of its improved waterproofing) and, for the tournament itself, the River Plate.
The design of interlocking triads was unlike anything seen before, giving the ball the impression of being in something approaching perpetual motions, with the triads mixing together into a blur if a player put spin on a shot. They also walked a delicate tightrope of exclusivity and familiarity. While they were used for both the World Cup and the European Cup from then on, they were priced at an alarming £35 to £50, or £250 to £350, adjusted to inflation to 2024. You’d seen them. You knew them. But it was highly unlikely that you’d know anyone who had one in 1978 who didn’t live in a mansion. Furthermore, as the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, they started to be used at several clubs in England, including Manchester United, Liverpool, Everton and Arsenal. In recognition of this growth into colder markets a pleasingly-luminous orange version, the Bilbao, was also released.
Four years later in Spain, the Tango Sevilla was introduced, the last leather ball to be used in a World Cup finals. But the launch of this ball was more troublesome, with deflation leading to them having to be replaced during matches. But in 1984 in France they reached a new peak with the Tango Mundial, the brilliant design further accentuated for that summer’s European Championships.
Unlike the Telstar, the Tango would endure into the new century. The next four World Cups and European Championships would use variations on the theme, albeit with the Tango name starting to take second place to the specific name given to the ball for that specific tournament. By the time it was withdrawn altogether, Adidas had given up on its name altogether. Maybe they just thought—and they’d likely have been correct—that everybody knew it was a Tango by this time. The last to use this design was the Adidas Terrestra Silverstream at Euro 2000. Its quasi-reboot for Euro 2012 was… not a success. But for all its fame and recognition, the Tango still feels under-appreciated. Its design has been superseded and has never really made a return since. It’s all something of a shame, really, since that original design is the best that you’ll see in this entire list.
13. The Official Football League Ball
As ossified as those who ran the Football League might have been by the end of the 1970s, even they couldn’t fail to recognise a storm of financial troubles ahead. Crowds were falling, but wages and (especially) transfer fees were rising. At some point, commercialism was always going to find its way into the game. And one of the first, and most visually arresting, moves that they made was to introduce a specific design for an Official Football League match ball in 1979.
Debuted for the 1979 League Cup final between Nottingham Forest and Southampton (which itself was later cannibalised for the Jackie Collins redemption arc Yesterday’s Heroes the following year), this particular entry into the list is a strange bird, because while the Football League might have come up with this fabulous wheeze in the first place, they don’t seem to have granted any exclusivity to a manufacturer, meaning that versions were made by Mitre (as the ‘Pro Max’) Stewart Surridge (better known as manufacturers of cricket equipment - they are reported as having been the designers in the first place) and Minerva all had a go.
Aesthetically, the single red stripe made this one of the most confusing balls to follow on the pitch. It didn’t seem to affect the players at all, but watching from a distance, it was easy to misjudge the way in which it was spinning. By the time of its final hurrah at the 1982 League Cup final between Liverpool and Spurs it had almost completely vanished from regular use, though just a couple of seasons earlier it could be seen at Old Trafford, Carrow Road and Portman Road, among others. It was also the ball used for the greatest goal ever scored.
12. Super Tele
Where else in the world can you buy an item of sporting equipment which remains effectively unchanged in more than fifty years for just a couple of pounds? With the Super Tele, that’s where. First released in July 1972 in Italy and available in white, both pale and royal blue, pink, green, orange, red and yellow, the Super Tele was designed for children, to be light so as to minimise any damage that they might do in play, and to be cheap. It even had a valve, so it could theoretically be pumped up, if you happened to be a maniac. The ball can actually stretch its history back still further too, to 1962’s Super Santos, another ball which can still be purchased today in some parts of the world.
But the Super Tele is also here as a representative of all of the floataway balls that could be purchased for buttons from newsagents or seaside tat shops—they were very good for volleyball—throughout the 1970s. In England, the Telstar design was also closely followed, though with the addition of club names being printed on the white areas. These team names always seemed like quite a variable list, and those reading them for the first time could be forgiven for thinking, “Liverpool? Makes sense. Manchester United? Obviously. West Bromwich Albion? I’ll allow it. QUEEN OF THE SOUTH?” Of course, they usually got punctured within half an hour of purchase, but what bliss it was then to be alive.
11. Mitre Delta 1000
By the middle of the 1980s, English football was in such a terrible state that it wasn’t difficult to imagine how the game could continue. Crowds had continued to plummet, hooliganism seemed out of control and there’d been scores of deaths at Valley Parade and Heysel. For the middle-aged among us, the Mitre Delta may create an involuntary croak on our throats.
This is the English football of the pre-Premier League years, the last gasp of the time before wild west capitalism got hold of football, lifted it upside down, and shook all the money out of its pockets. It was available with navy blue or red chevrons (I always preferred the red, but diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks, I guess), and crucially, Mitre had the foresight—unlike Adidas, a decade earlier—to also manufacture an affordable version of it, so that kids could go down the park and play a game with a ball that looked exactly like the one that was being used in those matches on the television on a Sunday afternoon. Mitre still use the Delta name to this day. I’m not sure they should be allowed to.