​​Why are Footballs made with a combination of Hexagons and Pentagon shapes?

Traditionally, footballs were made with a combination of hexagonal and pentagonal panels as they fit together like a puzzle to form a perfectly spherical shape which is why the hexagons and pentagons are equally important .

The stitched-football has 32 panels of leather or synthetic plastic tightly stitched together. 20 of these panels are hexagons and 12 of them are pentagons.

However, the modern day footballs are not stitched, they are thermally bonded. Thermally bonded footballs are different from their stitched counterparts in the way the panels are attached together. All of the panels are arranged inside a mold with adhesive applied to the edges of each panel. The mold is then heated and pressurized gluing all the panels together into a sphere.

This process is much less labor intensive than stitching the panels together. The first thermally bonded football was used in the 2004 European Championship.