Continental would like to draw attention to the similarities between footballs and tyres - links which few people are generally aware of, but which on closer inspection are not so very far-fetched. Obviously, a football is (at least initially) round and the same applies of course to tyres.

However, in principle, in the world of football and of tyres, it is 'All a question of technology', as the following report on the development of balls, weight reduction, quality controls, alternating tread patterns/lugs and studs reduced rolling resistance, winter tyres and new materials will reveal! Tyres are, after all, just like football boots, the only point of contact with the road and the pitch - and their quality and performance is a major factor in safe, comfortable, lasting and sporty mobility.

On average it must only absorb approximately 43 grammes of water, with 65 g as a maximum and within the space of three days, it must not lose more than 20% of its pressure. All this and much more is of course tested in laboratories. The valve and the seams have to still be in good order even after 2,000 shots. So there are quality controls here similar to those in the tyre industry.

Are the boots a further link between football and tyres? Both have apattern. Boots were and still are more important for the game of football today than the footballs themselves. The biggest technological advance in boots occurred almost exactly fifty years ago. This was a technological leap that fundamentally changed football forever.

To understand the relevance of this, one has to look at the weight of the boots. The football boots worn by British teams right up to the Fifties were indeed 'boots' and not very different from those worn by their predecessors a century earlier. The boots worn in Britain in the middle of the 20th century weighed around 550g each and the heaviest part was the steel toecap, something that had long since been dispensed with in Germany and elsewhere. The adidas boot worn, for example, by the German world champions in 1954 weighed just 380 grammes. Experts worked out that with 100 grammes less on each foot, a player taking around 10,000 steps during a 90 minute match would have to move approximately two tons less weight during the game.

It was raining cats and dogs during the final in Berne and the pitch was getting heavier by the minute. Then at half-time, Sepp Herberger turned to his kitman Dassler and said the famous - by now legendary - words: "Adi, longer studs!" And Adi Dassler, who was a trained baker, but a devoted designer of sports shoes, then screwed longer studs on to the soles of the boots worn by the future "heroes of Berne", so that in the second half, they could grip better in the mud - while they were running, shooting and presumably also when the 'boss' Helmut Rahn shot the crucial third goal.

In 1954, the screw-on studs were truly the German team's secret weapon and after the championship, the exchangeable studs conquered the entire football world. It meant that for the first time the boots could be adapted to suit the requirements of the football pitch, without the players having to switch their entire, carefully broken-in footwear, as had previously been the case with football boots with spiked, brass or rubber studs.

This success story is similar to the development of winter tyres in Europe. Designed to provide safety at low temperatures, in snow and ice, Continental had already launched these products in 1952 and still today they constitute a focal point in the company's product portfolio for car tyres. Continental has, after all, been the European market leader for winter tyres for many years and constantly invests enormous energy and expense in incorporating new technologies into product improvement, thereby defending its market position.

He could no longer stand driving his carriage virtually unsprung over the very bumpy roads of his home town of Edinburgh and so - according to the patent granted to him in 1845 - he nailed "a hollow belt made from air- and water-tight material like Indian rubber" on to the rock-hard wooden wheels of his carriage.

This belt could be inflated with air, so that the entire surface of the wheels presented a cushion of air to the ground on which they ran. Initially, the material Thomson used was animal gut, then later more resistant rubber tubes. And the system worked very well. The horses pulling the Scotsman's carriage also liked it, because the harnesses no longer cut as deeply into their skin. The discovery did not, however, bring its inventor any success, because this was the middle of the nineteenth century, before there were any bicycles or cars, so there was no market for Thomson's invention, which was then soon forgotten.

John Boyd Dunlop, a Scotsman who practised as a vet in Ireland, was the second inventor of the tyre. He was not only a vet, he also loved children and was a caring father. In 1888 in Belfast, he obtained a patent for a pneumatic linen casing, which he nailed to his young son's tricycle, so that it ran more easily.

The invention did not, however, do Dunlop much good either, although people were more mobile at this time, clambering first on to their draisine, that innovative cycle, then on to the penny-farthing and the bicycle. Unfortunately, Dunlop had made the mistake of only protecting the patent on his invention for two years, which meant that afterwards any company interested in manufacturing tyres could use the pneumatic tyre without paying royalties.

Like the early football boots, these tyres did not yet have any pattern on them. People drove around on 'blank' tyres, more or less slicks, but of course without the sophisticated tread compounds, since engines were not very powerful at that time and initially no great demands were made on tyres in terms of grip. It was only in 1904, almost exactly a hundred years ago, that Continental became the first manufacturer to launch the tyre tread pattern and also added carbon black to its rubber to make the susceptible and rather failure-prone pneumatic tyres of the day more resilient. Up until then motorists had had to live with flat tyres on virtually any longer journey and change at least one tyre along the way.