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On Soccer

World Cup Ball Is Already in Goalkeepers’ Heads

Johannesburg

At least everyone seems satisfied that the official World Cup ball is not rectangular.

Otherwise, goalkeepers dislike the Adidas ball more than Diego Maradona dislikes reporters and photographers. Although to the keepers’ credit, they have not yet fired at the balls with air rifles or run over them in their cars.

Basically, the ball is being criticized for being too light and too curvy, as if it were a fashion model who eats too little food and has too much plastic surgery.

Altitude and technology will not only cause goalkeepers stress, but also make balls carry too far on crosses, causing some headers to be missed by two feet, said Marcus Hahnemann, a reserve keeper for the United States and a man not given to understatement.

“Technology is not everything,” Hahnemann said Thursday. “Scientists came up with the atom bomb; it doesn’t mean we should have invented it.”

Adidas has christened the World Cup ball Jabulani, which is apparently Zulu for “offends goalkeepers.”

Not really. The name actually means “to celebrate.” But it has been lost in translation for the guys between the posts.

¶“A disaster,” France goalkeeper Hugo Lloris said.

¶Iker Casillas of Spain: “Like a beach ball.”

¶Italy’s Gianluigi Buffon: “Shameful.”

¶David James of England: “Dreadful.”

¶ Fernando Muslera of Uruguay said with a hiss: “The worst I’ve ever played with.”

The ball was designed to be groovier than a Beach Boys album, made of molded polyurethane panels with a grippy feel, and engineered to provide the shooter maximum control. It has been tested in wind tunnels. Robots whacked at the ball to simulate free kicks and corner kicks. The party-hearty wives and girlfriends of England’s players took it out and got it drunk.

O.K., maybe that last part never happened. But to hear Adidas’s breathless promotion, you would think the ball had undergone every sort of testing but a three-car pileup at Daytona.

Oh, and there is a larger purpose to the Jabulani than merely kicking it into a net. Its 11 colors are meant to symbolize the 11 players on the field and the 11 official languages spoken in South Africa.

“The colorful design brings together the tremendous diversity of the country in harmonious unity,” Adidas said on its Web site.

Image
Hugo Lloris of France headed a World Cup ball. Credit...Francois Mori/Associated Press

As opposed to disharmonious unity, which is how the goalkeepers are responding.

Of course, technology, high and low, has long been used to manipulate sports equipment for desired effects. The Colorado Rockies store baseballs in a humidor to keep them from trans-Atlantic flight in the thin air of Denver. National Hockey League teams store pucks in a freezer to reduce friction on the ice. Punters and kickers beat on oblong footballs like punching bags to make them more pliable. Some put them in clothes dryers and, reportedly, in microwave ovens.

In soccer, no one wants a repeat of the 1990 World Cup, where scoring was so low that cobwebs grew between the goalposts. Tim Howard, the starting American goalkeeper, dislikes the Adidas ball, too, but realizes the competing needs of sport and entertainment.

“I think I understand how that business works,” Howard said. “Shutouts don’t bring the attention. The ball is moving all over the place. I think we learned a long time ago as goalkeepers, it’s no excuse. You have to figure out the movement of the ball. If it moves too much, then you just get it out of harm’s way and don’t try to be too cute and clever with it. It’s about adapting.”

In less affluent parts of the world, some youngsters grow up playing soccer with balls made of old shirts or plastic bags. Sissi, a star with Brazil in the 1999 Women’s World Cup, used to kick around the heads of her dolls. So adapting to a top-of-the-line model should not overwhelm anyone.

As Bruce Arena, then the United States coach, told reporters before the 2002 World Cup: “It’s a ball. Last time I checked, it was still round. If they make it square, I’ll start to worry.”

Still, it is the goalkeepers’ obligation to complain. Happens every World Cup. Perhaps this is because goals are so few and prized. And because the keepers are so alone and vulnerable to blame and their job is destructive, to obstruct, to impede, to deface the masterpiece being painted by everyone else.

Their complaints, though, seem to have little merit. Goal scoring has gone down, not up, over the decades at the World Cup, peaking at 5.4 goals per game in 1954 and dropping to 2.3 in 2006.

Adidas has fired back at its critics, saying forwards and goalkeepers will have a better idea where this ball is headed than any other.

“If you look back in history, there have always been criticisms about the ball before the World Cup, but not so much afterward, after you’ve seen great goals and great saves,” Thomas van Schaik, an Adidas spokesman, told The Associated Press.

The United States team has been practicing with the ball for nearly three weeks. Coach Bob Bradley does not seem overly concerned, though adjusting to the ball’s bending and dipping at altitude takes some time.

Midfielder Clint Dempsey likes the ball and is thinking of asking it to go steady.

“If you hit it just right — you don’t have to hit it as hard as you can — just hit it solid and you get a good knuckle on the ball,” Dempsey said. “That causes problems for the goalie. The only thing is, you’ve got to pay more attention to detail when you pass the ball. If you get it just a little bit wrong, you end up looking pretty silly.”

James, the English goalkeeper, seems resigned to the Jabulani.

“It’s horrible, but it’s horrible for everyone,” he said.

Maybe he could call the Rockies and ask for a humidor.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: World Cup Ball Is Already In Goalkeepers’ Heads. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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