Bayer MaterialScience & adidas partner for FIFA World Cup ball
16 Mar '06
5 min read
High-tech '+Teamgeist'
Polymers & high performance plastics developer Bayer MaterialScience announced that it has signed a deal with adidas for FIFA World Cup ball.
Ball experts talk shop: Rudi Völler, ex-German international and former coach of the German national team, pays a visit to the research department to learn just how much high-tech has gone into the new World Cup ball.
Thomas Michaelis, manager of the World Cup ball project at Bayer MaterialScience, explains how the adhesive is heat-activated to help keep the ball absolutely round during the rough treatment it gets on the pitch.
"We are facing a task that is equivalent at least to the squaring of the circle if not to the sphering of the cube." This was how Angela Merkel, Germany's first Federal Chancellor, described the difficult tasks facing her Government weeks ago. The challenge facing adidas and Bayer MaterialScience – one of the biggest plastics producers in the world – in developing the soccer ball for the FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany was equally daunting.
The aim of the project was to make what is, by definition, a round soccer ball even rounder and even better for the biggest sports event in the world in 2006. What has come out of it all, after a long period of intensive joint development work, is a truly high-tech product that answers to the name "+Teamgeist".
The word translates into English as "Team Spirit", and could equally be applied to the many years of outstanding cooperation between adidas and Bayer. "We developed the first all-synthetic ball together for the World Cup in Mexico in 1986. Since then, we have produced a new model for every World Cup and European Championships," explains Thomas Michaelis, Project Manager for ball development at Bayer MaterialScience.
marketing@alchempro.com
