FootballFilter

Thanks to the lovely people at Soccerpro I was also given the chance to try out some of their products and I was more than happy to oblige.

First up was the Nike FC Barcelona training jersey which retails at around $33.00 followed by the Nike T90 football which retails at around $32.00.
As with most Nike products the Barcelona training jersey looks and feels like a quality garment. The trademark swoosh symbol is found on the chest and on the back of the neck while the black piping over the silver panels gives it a sleek and fashionable look. The overall stylish appearance is capped off by, of course, the famous F.C. Barcelona crest.

I tried it out first running in my local park and then in a training match with some mates. With a cold English wind whipping across me I found the top gave little protection – at times I felt as though I was running with no top on! But as I got going the shirt offered more protection from perspiration. While I was sweating I didn’t feel too hot or uncomfortable and I could certainly tell the difference from when I wear a cotton T-shirt to exercise.
When playing football the shirt didn’t restrict my movement in anyway, despite being rather close-fitting in some areas! In fact I found it more comfortable to wear than many of my replica shirts.
Overall it is a nice looking and practical shirt that does everything it is asked too. It has the quality design and look brands like Nike and Barcelona are expected to have, yet it offers all the performance of a replica shirt – but without the price tag.

Next up was the Nike T90 Football. Again I would give 10/10 in the beauty stakes. Silver slashes, on white and navy panelling finished off with the trademark swoosh symbol. It at least looked the part, while the hexagonal panelling gave it a slightly retro, old-school feel.

Once pumped up the ball had a even bounce and was easy to control. Even though I wasn’t playing on a windy day, the ball did swerve a lot in the air making goalkeeping difficult (well that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!).

The down side however was that the panelling became scratched and worn quite quickly, suggesting that after a few months of play they will eventually peel off, making the ball become misshapen and hard to control. This is perhaps to be expected as it is only a training ball, but there are more Nike footballs around that will either cost less or hold onto their shape for longer. I would urge you to think about what you want the ball for, be it for matches, regular training or just the occasional kick-about, before making your purchase.

To buy these products and more go to soccerpro.com

I love free stuff, well not all free stuff, the clap for example can be free, but I do like getting free stuff related to things I like, hmmm sorry that joke has back fired it seems.  

We make absolutely no money out of footballfilter.com or the blog but were recently contacted by SoccerPro to review some of their products….likewise our new writer Tom was also asked – his review to follow, and we jumped at the chance…

So I have a bit of an interest in different types of footballs, see my “evolution of the football” for more details….its more a nostalgic thing than anything as I haven’t owned a football since I was about 15, but jumped the change when SoccerPro got in touch.  Basically I decided to ‘review’ three reasonably priced footballs.  How do you review a football you may ask?  Well I wanted to focus on the cost.  Footballs these days can cost up to about 100-200 quid so we all know they are going to be reasonably good but what about the cheapos?  Well here’s what I got……

A Nike Tiempo Team Training ball

An Adidas Tango Rosario ball – for pure nostalgic reasons

And a Diadora Napoli ball

Prices

Nike – 12 dollars

Adidas – 25 dollars

Diadora – 17 dollars

Considering the Adidas Tango is the most expensive and is close to my infantile heart, its actually pretty shit, horribly shiny, not anything like how they used to be, cheaply made and even the design/graphics seem a little fake really.  The Nike on the other hand is pretty good, to be fair its well cheap and is aimed at training….don’t think it’ll last long but yeah it does the job.  The Diadora on the other hand is actually brilliant.  It looks cool, it doesn’t seem cheap like the old Adidas and is defo durable….I’m a little drawn to it to be honest, always using that one for juggling practice in the house and the garden during my first BBQ of the year on Saturday.  So theres my review innit.  Diadora make good balls, quite surprised really cause I have always found the Diadora brand a little tacky – Italy, many apols.

The blog is being a pain in the arse and won’t let me upload the photo I wanted to add……here is a link to the footballs that I purchased…… http://www.flickr.com/photos/footballfilter/3362976937/

I am in tres nostalgic mood at the moment, looking through my old pro set and my brothers old shoot magazines (which I will do a post about soon) and I started to think about the development of the football over the years.  David James did a similar blog on the guardian quite recently where he complained about the constant changing of the style of balls, mostly for commercial reasons.  Which got me thinking, has anyone really looked into the evolution of the football, like a picture posting or something?  A few sites are dedicated to soccer ball history but I thought I should at least do a brief blog on it on this fine Sunday afternoon, Chelsea just thrashed Portsmouth 4-0 and United are drawing with Newcastle so all is well…..

Mitre, Adidas, Nike and Puma are some of the bigger names in the world of the football.  According to the power that is Wikipedia, the first specifications were defined in 1863 by the Football Association and then adjusted in 1872 and have been the following ever since:

Take from the following link here are the laws of football

http://www.fifa.com/worldfootball/lawsofthegame.html:

The ball is:
• spherical
•  made of leather or other suitable material
•  of a circumference of not more than 70 cm (28 ins) and not less
than 68 cm (27 ins)
•  not more than 450 g (16 oz) and not less than 410 g
(14 oz) in weight at the start of the match
•  of a pressure equal to 0.6 – 1.1 atmosphere (600 – 1,100 g/cm2) at sea level (8.5 lbs/sq in – 15.6 lbs/sq in)

Not too many specifics have really been made by the looks of it which explains the dramatic technological evolution of the ball over the last 100 or so years.   You’ll notice in the following photos dramatic change even between the World Cup in 98 and the World Cup in 2002.  But lets start from the beginning:

old skool ball blud

Now I have skipped 30 odd years but take a look at this ball as a kind of example of the beginnings of football technology.   Taken from the site http://www.asdiansi.com/anball.htm this ball apparently is a 1930s World Cup ball.  Look at the string stitching?  As the ball developed in the 70s-80s the standard came for 32 panel football, also known as a truncated icosahedron football:

Classic ball from 1970 World Cup

Above picture was taken from: <!– @page { size: 21cm 29.7cm; margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } –>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1970Telstar_2006-08-11.jpg

Not only was the shape of the ball developed over the years as you can see above but the use of leather was altered as time went on.  The idea was to make more water resistant footballs, preventing the ball from getting heavy during rainy games.  This 1970 ball is an absolute classic in my opinion but I think the following ‘Tango’ ball is even better:

Photo take from: http://www.adidas-group.com/en/bizmedia/WorldCup/ball_history/default.asp (great source, check it out).

Not a lot seems to be different between this ball used in the 1982 World Cup in Spain (called the Tango Mundial ball) by the likes of Rossi, Zico, Maradona, Platini and Bryan Robson.  And in fact this ball was the last time a pure leather ball was used in a World Cup.  Even though they had added rubberized seams it still suffered from bad water resistance and the balls often had to be changed a fair few times during games. So this is when the ball started to get shiny….

shiny leather innit

Now it appears that Adidas have had the rights to the World Cup ball since forever, but meanwhile back in the day to day footballing world of England and the newly formulated ‘Premiership’ Mitre were the Rupert Murdoch tycoons of the soccer ball world.  In 1992 clubs had to use their own match balls but it was then agreed for the next season (and then the following 7 years) that Mitre would be the official match ball providers.  I owned a Mitre ball at some point during the 90s as did everyone else and most local Footy Clubs to, remember these?  The Mitre Promax and the Mitre Ultimax:

Mitre Pro Max wup!

Ultimax - used for games in the snow, which never happens, so just a cash in basically.

These two pictures were taken from the following page:

http://images.sportsshoes.com/product/C/CAR20/CAR20_250_1.jpg

http://www.jorkasport.nl/catalog/images/Mitre%20Ultimax%20Fluo.gif

Next followed the Nike contract for the premiership while in the World Cup Adidas reign supreme, this however was when the amount of panels changed from the old school 32 of the beautiful 90s to the 14 (approx) panels of the +Temgeist by Adidas (also known as a truncated octahedron by nobody) and the Nike Geo Merlin (later the Total 90)

shiny ball built on steroetypical German efficiency perhaps

Image taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(ball)

nikenikenike

Image take from: http://www.soccer.com/Images/Catalog/ProductImages/300/243310.JPG

Take that World Cup ball  above for example and then look at the Tricolore ball used at the 1998 World Cup in France (Teamgeist was used at 206):

French Ball

Image taken from: http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=285661&rel_no=1

The difference is pretty dramatic really no?  The tricolore isnt very far from the balls of the 80s whereas the +Teamgeist is defintely suggesting what direction the scientists are taken the ball for the future.  More shiny and less panels seem to the be the mode de jour.  I imagine the final achievement would be a ball perfectly formed, no panels that still has the weight and control of the balls of old and not like one of those plastic balls you played with at school that moved left and right while in the air.

Personally I don’t know if this development is a good thing, in the last few years the way free kicks have been taken (particularly by the likes of Ronaldo and Juninho) could arguably be linked to the development in football technology.  Of course it has been always been relatively possible to score freekicks like the Ronaldos of today but the way the ball is beginning to move in the air over the last few years definitely appears to more common and I firmly believe this has alot to do with the structure of footballs now.  Of course progression is a good thing, but part of me definitely will miss the Mitres of the 90s with their chubby panels and squeaky shine will always be more appealing than the almost perfectly shapd +Teamgeist.

What are your thoughts and what balls of old do you remember?