A grand 'Finale' for the grand final
Tuesday, May 14, 2002
Article summary
A year ago adidas presented the 'Finale', the ball used in the UEFA Champions League final.
Article body
More accurate than ever
The outer skin of the 'Finale' consists of five layers, plus a polyurethane film on which the starball motif is printed from underneath. The new ball also incorporated the 'syntactic foam' system based on gas-filled micro-balloons that are deformed and compressed when the ball is kicked but immediately return to their original form, making the flight of the ball more accurate than ever. During the development stage, players such as Zinedine Zidane, Raúl González, Patrick Kluivert and Alessandro Del Piero put the 'Finale' through its paces - though their hopes of putting boot to new ball during the final in Milan were thwarted - as were no shots at goal except the ones delivered from the penalty spot.
Tremendous success
Since then, the star ball with the starball has been a tremendous success and, during the run-up to the Hampden Park final, adidas reported that sales had passed the quarter-of-a-million mark. What's more, everybody has been playing with it - not just the top professionals in the Champions League but also amateurs and kids playing park football. "Frankly, we were surprised," said Jim Latham, the adidas Global Sports Marketing Director. "The interest in the ball from all our markets was amazing, especially considering that many countries where the ball has been widely sold have never even had a team in the Champions League."
Starball logo
For the 2002 final in Glasgow, adidas have produced a new edition of the 'Finale' which has the same technical specifications but different colouring to mark the tenth anniversary of the Champions League. When the starball 'logo' was presented to UEFA's current Chief Executive, Gerhard Aigner, in Stockholm prior to the official launch of the Champions League in 1992, the idea of playing with a football that matched the logo was first discussed. The blueprint - if you can call it that - was in jet-black and white and this original idea has now been realised by adidas for the grand Finale to the tenth Champions League campaign.
