Although a soccer ball can be put together in many ways, there is one design so ubiquitous that it has become iconic. This standard soccer ball is glued together from 32 polygons, 12 of them five-sided and 20 six-sided, arranged in such a way that every pentagon (five-sided) is surrounded by hexagons (six-sided). ----. This colour scheme was introduced for the World Cup in 1970 to enhance the visibility of the ball on television, although the design itself is older.