Select

Select exists because a goalkeeper got tired of catching crooked balls. Eigil Nielsen kept Denmark's goal in 28 internationals between 1940 and 1951, won Olympic bronze in London in 1948, and in 1947 founded the company that would change the game's central object. In 1951 he launched the first laceless ball with a built in valve, the end of headers against the cord. In 1962 came the definitive invention: the 32-panel ball, 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons inspired by Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, the design that for decades was the universal meaning of the word ball. In 1974 the company made the first hand stitched synthetic leather ball. Based in Glostrup, on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Select now sells millions of balls a year to over 50 countries and supplies top leagues including the Bundesliga. Teamwear, like this shirt, is the quiet relative in the catalogue. The ball you picture when you close your eyes was invented by a Dane.