What are footballs really made of?

Andi Thomas investigates what’s really used in making footballs – all is not quite as it seems. It was an unremarkable game in the German second division. Hans Götterdämmerung of Alemannia Aachen had been having one of his easier afternoons in goal. As another weak corner floated into the box he leapt to meet it, connecting hard with both fists and firing the ball out towards the far touchline. “As I made contact, something very strange happened,” he later told me. “I thought nothing of it, but after the game, one of my opponents said that he had noticed it too. Then we remembered that the ball for that corner had a different pattern, one that I didn’t recognise. It didn’t come back for the throw-in, though. They gave the full-back a normal one, and we didn’t see it again.” Götterdämmerung was right. The ball he punched that day was different to any other he’d punched throughout his fifteen-year-career. It was a prototype, not yet meant for use in competitive football, and the tale behind its manufacture is a scandal that threatens to engulf two of Europe’s foremost manufacturers of sporting goods, as well as FIFA themselves. But while the story will end in the courtrooms of Europe, it begins half a world away, in Peru, deep in the beautiful “cloud forests” of the Andes. These forests form when clouds descend into the saddles between mountains and hang at the level of the tree canopy. Rich in mosses and overflowing with endemic flora and fauna, they are largely known in England as the home of the spectacled mountain bear. Paddington is their most famous exile, and his aunt Lucy lived somewhere among these trees. This is Deepest, Darkest Peru, and there are many wonderful and bizarre creatures in the damp, humid fog. A month ago, I was taken to see one of the very strangest. * My guide holds up his hand. We stop, as he peers into the misty gloom. Then he turns and nods, and points with a smile into a clearing. We edge forward, and finally — after three days of fruitless searching – I catch a glimpse of one of the most unusual animals in the world. If you’re a biologist, you might recognise the little brown thing snuffling at a decomposing tree stump as the cavia nicolasii, a close cousin of the guinea pig. To the rest of us, however, it is known as the Peruvian ball-pig. Slightly smaller than a slightly small pet rabbit, the ball-pig is a timid and apparently unremarkable creature. The relationship to the guinea pig and other cavies is evident, though their nose is a touch shorter, their faces flatter, and their bodies noticeably rounder than their domestic cousins. Living on moss and other vegetation, they are naturally shy, and if I didn’t know better I’d assume they were cute, but otherwise entirely unremarkable creatures. But then I tread on a stray twig. Startle a guinea pig and it will run away; poke it, and it might bite. Startle the ball-pig, though, and it does something ridiculous. It inflates. I look at the furry sphere resting on the ground in front of me, and it’s all I can do not to laugh. My guide is clearly also amused, though he’s seen this a thousand times before. The ball-pig sits on the forest floor like a hairy four-legged balloon, with a striking, almost affronted expression on its face, as though it was taking my mirth personally. “I didn’t ask to evolve this way,” its bulging eyes complain. “And anyway,” its distended eyebrows add, “you’ve heard of the puffer fish, and the pebble toad. Why not the ball-pig?” Why not indeed. Scientists believe that the inflation was initially a defence mechanism against a long-extinct, snub-nosed predator. The ball-pig is also very light, so when this mooted predator attempted to attack, it would simply bounce out of harm’s way, until the hungry threat became frustrated and sought simpler prey. But thanks to this now-useless instinct, a creature already identified as “Vulnerable” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature is under serious threat. * Back in Germany, a week after my trip to the forest, I attend a highly-secret, highly-sensitive presentation by executives working for two major sporting goods companies. While I cannot reveal their names here, they hold manufacturing contracts throughout Europe’s top leagues and their products are worn in and kicked around playgrounds throughout Britain. I watch in silence as they outline plans to replace the synthetic ‘bladders’ currently used in the manufacture of footballs with the inflated bodies of ball-pigs. “It would devastate the ball-pig population,” says Jayne Banjacks, a research fellow of veterinary medicine at University College London. “They are already under significant threat from a number of predators as well as the erosion of their habitat. This could well destroy them.” What motivates these companies is not necessarily a desire to save money, but the unique natural properties of these rare creatures. This not just a return to animal fabrics, a pig’s bladder for the twenty-first century. What these companies have discovered is that by artificially stimulating the ball-pig with adrenaline, and then immersing them in a soup of nutrients, the ball-pig can be kept inflated for weeks, even months at a time. These footballs won’t contain the skin of the animal but the animal itself: alive, chemically terrified, and sealed into a leather prison. A football with a living creature inside? The executives tell us of their hopes for their creation. With every kick, the twitching of the still living ball-pig will exacerbate the knuckleball effect already prevalent in modern balls. Balls will swerve as never before, in more unpredictable and idiosyncratic ways. Goals will become both more common and spectacular. And profits, inevitably, will rise. * “I’ve never operated on a football before,” jokes Banjacks, as she works her scalpel carefully into a prototype. It is her last moment of levity for a while, as we peel away the patterned leather and free the ball-pig from its prison. “They’ve shaved it,” she says, gesturing at the exposed and puckered flesh, covered in semi-healed nicks and scabs. “That ensures the nutrients can enter through the skin. The arms and legs have gone, of course.” She points to the cauterised stumps. “And look, there, they’ve cut the eyes out. The eyes of a ball-pig protrude, of course; it must have been affecting the smoothness of the ball.” She locates and removes the implant that releases adrenaline into the bloodstream — it’s modelled, she says, on the contraceptive implant — and we watch over several hours as the ball-pig slowly calms and deflates. Were it a healthy specimen, it would return to its natural size, but in this case the skin, having been stretched for so long, will never retreat again. The ball-pig struggles weakly in folds of thin, pink flesh. But what moves me most, and what provokes a clearly emotional Banjacks to reach for a lethal and merciful syringe, is the sound. The complete lack of sound. For one last indignity has been visited upon the hapless, helpless creature expiring silently before us: its lips have been sewn together. What Götterdämmerung heard that day, when he punched that ball that he should never have seen, was the startled yelp of a tortured animal whose stitches had come apart. Already the PR machine is creaking into action and smoothing the way: a few journalists, happy to exchange copy for hospitality, have written inaccurate and dangerous pieces describing the ball-pig as a “pest” and a “disease-carrier”, and advocating a cull. FIFA, meanwhile, have been consulted at every stage and have recently approved the use of the new balls in forthcoming U-21 tournaments. Sepp Blatter is said to be very excited at the prospect of the ball-pig’s flinches driving goalkeepers into therapy. Neither FIFA nor the companies involved were willing to comment, though their legal teams have been happy to pursue injunctions that prevent me from naming them here. Regardless, the truth is clear. In the never-ending search for a fatter revenue stream, these football men have taken something rare and precious, something beautiful and ludicrous, and they have shaved, maimed, bloated, drugged, and blinded it, before finally stitching its lips together so that nobody can hear it scream. You can find more from Andi Thomas on his website, Twisted Blood.