Celebrations - Rambling Infrequently

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07/07/10 Average Rating: 5 out of 5

Just one thing
12/01/10 Average Rating: 3.8 out of 5

Regency Muck
25/08/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5

In the news today...
27/07/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5

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09/07/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5

And now the bad news...
24/03/09 Average Rating: 5 out of 5

Stuart Lee's Comedy Vehemence
17/03/09 Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5

Whinge Drinking
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Grrrrr...oogle
21/01/09 Average Rating: 3.8 out of 5

White Teeth
21/12/08 Average Rating: 5 out of 5

Now that Take That are cool...
12/12/08

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25/11/08 Average Rating: 4 out of 5

For Goodness' Sake
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Banks, but no Banks
06/11/08 Average Rating: 5 out of 5

Well I Liked it
02/11/08 Average Rating: 2.8 out of 5

Celebrations
Luvvly Jabulani?
07/07/10

Adidas proudly trumped up their new ball for the World Cup as 'The smoothest football ever'. As always for a World Cup, the ball manufacturers have tried to make a ball that favours strikers and troubles goal keepers. The thinking behind this is presumeably that football isn't very popular, and the World Cup in itself is not very interesting. The best solution would be to try to encourage more goals - that way the mainly football-hating population of most of the world might be coaxed into watching a game on TV. I remember some time in the last twenty years there was talk of widening the goals for this same purpose (I think to try to encourage more Americans to get interested in "Soccer", their apparently short attention spans being the understood cause of their distaste for the sport).

In the face of many complaints about how light the ball is, Adidas retorted that there are strict guidelines on weight and size, and their ball fits into these. I've not seen or weighed one (or a normal football), so I can't comment from my own experience. However, evidently it feels light because the players have complained about this, some comparing it to a ball you would buy at a garage or supermarket.

Who can say for sure whether the ball is to blame, but this World Cup has seen several humiliating and career-damaging goal keeping errors. Additionally we have seen penalties blasted over the bar, and some of the World's best takers of free kicks have seen their attempts balloon skyward rather than curling into the goal and long passes across the pitch have been failing to meet their mark. People who like football may not have been enjoying this so much. The only good goal keeping error is one committed by a team you actually want to see defeated. Otherwise it's just depressing! Is your favourite goal a poor effort that ambles past an haplessly clutching keeper, or a wonder goal from outside the box that curls beautifully into the top corner, while the keeper leaps, arms outstreached, and grazes the ball with his hopeless fingertips?

Now I am not a scientist, but I have heard a few things about spin and curl. Curl on a thrown or kicked ball can be predicted achieved due to variations in the ball's surface. In the words of my father 'if cricket balls were smooth, there wouldn't be any cricket'. So what could be desireable in a smooth football? Players have complained it behaves unpredictably, keepers of course are not happy, and viewers have seen shot after shot blasted into the stands.

It may or may not be a coincidence that the German team are doing very well with the new ball, it having been used in the German football leagues since earlier this year. This raises questions of fairness of course. Some leagues could not use the new ball due to contracts with other manufacturers. Fifa have reiterated that the ball was available for anyone to use since December, but I doubt the managers in those leagues would be happy for their players to be practising off the pitch with a different kind of ball. Additionally, the Germans have played really well. Do we really want to attribute any of their success to the fact that they had more chance to practise with the ball? I'd rather just say they're a great team.

What this is all leading towards is my disgust at Adidas, Fifa and Loughborough University (who invented and tested the Jabulani ball), for presuming that they know so much more than the players and the fans about what makes football enjoyable. It's as if they're saying "We know you don't like football very much, so we're going to improve it for you". It happens every World Cup with a new ball (though I am convinced this is the worst one yet), and I am sick of it! Somehow they have failed to observe that almost every country in the world (excepting North America) is obsessed with football, and that enough people are going to watch their precious World Cup, thank you very much.

Follow Dermot (MrsNicolaRain) on Twitter

Comments about This Article

I'd like to see international football played with one of those vibrating balls with a raccoon attached; as they sell in pete's jokeshop. 4 tumbridge ave, Tumbridge wells. You're one stop shop for vibrating raccoon balls.(And nothing else). So to recap; that's petes' jokeshop. No1 in town for all your comedy racconery needs. Again. That's petes' jokeshop. Comment By: Pete p. From petes' jokeshop, 07 Jul 2010, Rating: 5/5

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