First-ever 3D X-ray scans produced by the National Facility for X-ray Computed Tomography (NXCT) team based at the Henry Royce Institute at The University of Manchester, working with the National Football Museum, reveal the 1966 final ball inside and out – from its 25 hand-stitched panels to the perished bladder no one has seen in six decades.
View this post on Instagram
Sir Geoff Hurst hit it three times. Thirty million people watched it on black-and-white television. Then a West German forward put it under his arm and took it home.
Sixty years after the 1966 World Cup final, the most famous football in England’s history has been examined as never before.
The NXCT team based at the Henry Royce Institute at The University of Manchester has worked with the National Football Museum to produce the first 3D X-ray scans of the Slazenger Challenge 4 Star used at Wembley on 30 July 1966. The scans render, in extraordinary detail, both its 25-panel, hand-stitched leather exterior and the degraded latex bladder sealed inside it since the day England won the World Cup.
It is a portrait of a vanished craft. Each Challenge 4 Star took two-and-a-half hours to stitch by hand at the Slazenger works in Horbury, near Wakefield, and had to meet strict specifications: 14 to 16 ounces in weight and 27 to 28 inches in circumference. The ball earned its place in the final by winning a blind test of more than 100 footballs at The FA’s headquarters. The now-iconic orange was not a stylistic flourish, but a practical choice designed to stand out on the monochrome television sets of 1966.
Set against the ball used in this month’s 2026 World Cup final, the scans make 60 years of progress impossible to miss. The Trionda is built from four thermally bonded panels of polyurethane, polyester, viscose and synthetic rubber, and carries an inertial measurement unit sensor that tracks every contact and positional change. In 1966, the technology was a needle and thread.
The ball’s journey to its display case at the National Football Museum is just as fascinating as the final in which it was used. After England’s 4–2 win in front of some 97,000 spectators, Helmut Haller – who had scored the opening goal – carried it back to Germany, claiming tradition entitled the first scorer to keep it. It stayed there for 30 years, until a consortium of the Mirror Group, Virgin and Eurostar bought it for £80,000 and repatriated it ahead of Euro ’96. The initials on its surface belong to Uri Geller, who signed it for luck as a pre-tournament publicity stunt.
Today, the ball sits on permanent display in the National Football Museum’s ‘England on the World Stage’ section, alongside Hurst’s hat-trick shirt and other objects from the final. The museum marks the anniversary on Thursday 30 July with a programme of talks from its Visitor Experience team on the 1966 tournament and the final itself.
Dr Matthew Lawson, who performed the scans at the NXCT facility, said:
X-rays are a fantastic tool to non-destructively see inside objects, this technique has been used a lot in cultural heritage previously but never to look inside such a nationally significant football!
“Although a football is mostly air on the inside, we were able to see the makeup of the leather panels, the stitching and the perished air bladder in amazing detail thanks to X-ray computed tomography. Everyone at the NXCT in the University of Manchester would like to thank the National Football Museum for this exciting opportunity to scan such an artefact and to hold it in our own hands!”
Tim Desmond, CEO of the National Football Museum, said:
“This is the most famous football in the country and, until now, nobody had ever properly looked inside it. What the scans give us is a window into how the game was made in 1966, the materials, the methods, the craft of a ball stitched by hand in a Yorkshire factory. It’s also a measure of just how far the technology has travelled to reach the Trionda of 2026.
“We’re a museum committed to educating ourselves and others, and to translating objects behind glass into stories people can get inside. As such, my thanks go to the University of Manchester for their expertise and curiosity that have created such a brilliant insight for our visitors and beyond. If you haven’t seen it already, come and witness a slice of history for yourself.”
Professor David Knowles, CEO of the Henry Royce Institute added:
“This is a wonderful example of how advanced materials characterisation techniques can help us to examine iconic objects from history. Thanks to world-leading imaging capabilities at Royce, colleagues have been able to look inside one of the most famous footballs ever used without causing any damage.
“It’s exciting to see cutting-edge materials science helping us better understand not only the technologies of the future but also the craftsmanship and the materials that have shaped the past.”
About NXCT
The National Facility for X-ray computed tomography (NXCT), has been in operation since November 2021, is an EPSRC-supported partnership uniting world-class CT expertise across the Universities of Manchester, Southampton, Warwick, UCL and Diamond Light Source (National X-ray Computed Tomography). The Henry Mosely X-ray imaging facility hosted at Manchester’s Henry Royce Institute provides cutting-edge imaging, data analysis and scientific support for a broad spectrum of users spanning material and life sciences as well as cultural history and public outreach projects too.
About the National Football Museum
The National Football Museum (NFM) in Manchester exists to house and harness the power of football, to share stories that influence, to showcase culture and involve and motivate people to creatively engage.
NFM is the only cultural organisation that tells the story of England’s national game and is custodian of the Football Heritage Collection, the largest public collection of football objects in the world. It has a strong social purpose to provide opportunities for everyone to enjoy football culture and creativity and to improve the wellbeing of its visitors and communities.
Investment from the European Regional Development Fund and National Lottery Heritage Fund has enabled the museum to welcome over 3 million visitors since opening in the Urbis Building in 2012. Thanks to funding from Manchester City Council all City of Manchester residents and schools are admitted free of charge.
In November 2022 NFM achieved National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) status awarded by Arts Council England (ACE) to leading institutions that maintain the world class cultural sector of England. Thanks to ACE funding, NFM can widen the reach of their work though the Football Creates Strategy, which uses the unrivalled power of football to engage people in creativity, championing inclusion and improving wellbeing.
