YOU MAY HAVE noticed that a great deal of this afternoon’s Euro 2012 draw ceremony was given over to the unveiling of the official tournament ball.
Christened the Tango 12, it is, like a great many of its predecessors, both spherical in shape and predominantly white in colour.
Adidas CEO Herbert Hainer described the technologically-advanced orb as “a combination of many years of football tradition coupled with extensive player and lab testing” and believes it to be at least equal, if not superior, to the footballs of yore.
The new design is the eleventh ball Adidas have produced for a UEFA Euro tournament (the ill-fated Tango 4, a 1kg rubber cube designed especially for the 1976 European Championships in Yugoslavia, never achieved mass production).
Each of the sixteen federations sending teams to the tournament will receive an allocation of thirty balls during the week commencing December 5.