Why don professional soccer leagues play with the iconic pentagonal, black-and-white, checkered balls?
It most likely has to do with licensing/marketing. Each league is paid incredible amounts of money by sporting good companies to have their specially designed ball be the “official ball” of that league. And every company wants to have their own design, so the black-and-white checked ball will likely never be seen again in the big league of Europe. Btw, that particular design was introduced at the 1974 World Cup and is called the “Telstar”, by adidas. For most Americans the Telstar design is the most associated with the sport. Why? Purely a guess, but soccer in the USA really reached a high point during the mid-1970s when Pele arrived to play in the North American Soccer League (NASL). Since 1974 was the last World Cup before Pele arrived, the Telstar was the ball of the moment throughout the world, although the NASL changed the black pentagons to red ones with a blue star inside each. Once the “Tango” ball was introduced in Argentina 1978, many league around the world switched to that
