The Ball Project in World Cup

Even before a football has been kicked in anger at the 2010 World Cup, the 12-coloured, eight-panel sphere named the Jabulani has already come under the microscope. “It’s rotten,” Iker Casillas said. “It’s horrible,” Brazil’s Julio Cesar thundered. “Cheap, supermarket ball.”

One of the few high-profile footballers who has come out in support of the ball is Brazil’s midfield magician Kaka — “I’m not going to criticise the Cup ball,” he asserted, holding up the thermoplastic polyurethane globe up to a dozen cameras and giving it a kiss. This could just be a coincidence, but Kaka happens to be contracted with Adidas, the manufacturers of the ball.

Either way, all the fuss kicked up one week before the World Cup raised a few questions: Aren’t these complaints repeated before each big tournament? Didn’t Oliver Kahn crib about the Adidas Teimgiest all the way to the final in Germany four years ago?

It was a search for answers to these queries that led us to German photographer Jens Heilmann who, three years ago, had asked himself a few rather basic questions that led to one of the more interesting footballing expeditions.

“As a kid, when I used to play, we used the Telstar or the Tango. I was driving to Munich three years ago when I suddenly started thinking about details of footballs — whether they always had the same design, the same size and the same weight. And, of course, had any one person actually photographed them all as a series? They were very simple questions, but hard to answer in my case as I had no idea.”

What that discussion with himself on that drive led to was a project that involved photographing footballs used in every World Cup since 1930 - balls that were actually used in matches, not those in mint condition.

“I thought it would be nice to produce a series of similar shaped objects with different designs.” Heilmann then began experimenting in his studio. He wanted his footballs to appear magical - he didn’t want hard edges, he didn’t want any shadows. The result is a series of photographs of footballs that, incredibly, border on art.

The journey
Heilmann started his hunt close to home — at the German Football Association and the Adidas headquarters. The ball used in the 1954 final was the one he got hold of first. That also turned out to be the easiest to track. “The ball belongs to the DFB (German Football Association). I called them and got permission right away, on the phone. I drove there, set up my equipment, and an hour-and-a-half later, I was back on the highway heading home.”

The start was smoother than he expected, but he had no idea how difficult things were to get, “In fact, I thought Adidas would have them all, or at least most of them. If not, I was sure they could help me get in touch with people who did.

“When I started searching for the pre-Adidas era balls (the company has manufactured balls for the World Cup since 1970), I was pretty naive.”

Heilmann made a trip to England in order to photograph the footballs of the 1930 and 1966 World Cups. He got in touch with football associations, manucturers and museums looking for balls that had been used in World Cup matches. By 2009, he had a bunch of pictures, but the project itself was far from being completed. He thought he had run into a dead end until he was introduced to Rene Sopp, a football memorabilia collector in Leipzig, Germany. The footballs from 1990, 2002 an 2006 are from Sopp’s collection.

Which was the most difficult ball to get hold of, we ask him. “That would have to be one from the 1982 World Cup — because I still haven’t found one.” The 1982 ball in the series, he says, is the only one in the entire collection that was not used in a World Cup match.

Sopp and Heilmann tracked down another collector, Roger Saur in New York City, who agreed to send over balls from 1994 and 1998 - these were nearly lost on the return trip.
The only documented ball from 1970 was traced to Francisco Aquino, who flatly refused to send them over from Mexico. “It was his biggest treasure,” he says. So Heilmann flew to Gaudalajara on the Pacific Coast at Christmas, a trip that he admits was the most fun he had during this project.

The stories
There are the stories surrounding the hunt, and there are stories behind the ball. The second set are equally interesting. In the 1930 World Cup final between Argentina and Uruguay, for example, two different balls were used. Argentina played the first half with a ball of their choice — the Tiento — and led 2-1 going into the break. In the second half, Uruguay chose to play with the T-Model, slightly larger and firmer, and turned the game around to win 4-2.

The ball from the 1954 edition is one used in the final in Berne, between Germany and Uruguay. The Germans had been beaten 8-3 by the same opponents just a fortnight before the title clash, and trailed 2-0 in this one before going on to win 3-2. The ball photographed by Heilmann came from the German manager Sepp Herberger’s personal collection and was autographed by all his players before they presented it to him. According to Helmut Rahn, who scored the winner, it had been Herberger’s responsibility throughout that tournament to pick the right ball for them. Understandably, the ball from this match — dubbed as the ‘Miracle of Berne’ — is one of Heilmann’s favourites.

And then, there’s Mr Crack — the ball that was used in 1962, and one that brings us back to the questions that started all this. Having had a first feel of the ball, Germany’s Uwe Seeler said: “This ball has no life, it is dead. You can’t really get any good contact on it, and it is very difficult to handle after a sharp pass or to maintain control over it in a fast run. The ball is too light. It climbs after striking it.” The German goalkeeper Hans Tilkowski’s was startlingly familiar: “It wobbles,” he said. Good, bad or ugly, at least the Jabulani is not alone.

Copies of the book and separate prints can be ordered at
www.theworldcupballs.com