FIFA 2010 World Cup: Researchers ready to prove 2010 World Cup Jabulani ball is the best ever produced
This year’s World Cup in South Africa has left its mark with the deafening vuvuzelas, controversial goals, and Maradonas’s hysterical notorious behaviour even by his standards, and the Adidas Jabulani ball have become the subject matter of this year’s World Cup.
The Jabulani ball was designed at Loughborough University in England by scientists and every attempt was made to make the ball as aerodynamic as possible. So far their attempts to make it superior than the previous one and been tarnished by bad comments and performances.
The Jabulani ball’s panels are stitched from the inside which creates almost a near perfect sphere. In addition, there is the Adidas "Grip'n'Groove" which is their latest technology that is intended to aid in consistent air flight, which should improve the balls performance. The English forward Frank Lampard should be told about this and he still won’t believe that the ball is better than the last one.
A set of scientists in France have refrained from going on strike long enough to ascertain that the ball has been giving incoherent results in the tournament because the ball is just too “perfect.”
A lot of experts say that the problem with the Jabulani ball could be that as the stitching is internal, so this way the ball represents a perfect sphere. A lame man would not understand the implications of a sphere but in reality if a normal ball is converted into a sphere than a lot changes from the ball is expected. The key features of the ball that would change would be its spin and its flight in air. Unfortunately, these are the key components of football.
While all the goalkeepers in the tournament had complained to FIFA before the World Cup had started, that the ball had uncharacteristic swing and dipped unpredictably that was later even shown in the World Cup, when Frank Lampard took a free kick and the ball dipped and instead hit a player’s hand. That might be the case with strikers in the tournament but the goalkeepers in the tournament have been the ones most affected, as if they miss the ball between the posts a goal will be scored.
Eric Burton Deputy Director of the Institute of the Science of Movement from France said that since the ball is a perfect sphere, this changes the shape of the ball and this further decreases the time of contact of the foot with the ball and because of this reason the ball barely spins. Comparatively the ball travels shorter distance and has an unpredictable trajectory, which creates problems and greatly affects both the goal keeper and the striker.
Some say that how can it be travelling comparatively less distances as goal keepers have been shooting it from one goal post to the other. Luis Fabiano thinks that the ball is “supernatural”, Diego Maradna believes that the uncertain flights of the ball are making long passes harder and that is why we have been seeing less long passes in this World Cup and Iker Casillas has called it rotten.
The originals academics have been criticized, as they did the wind tunnel tests on a stationary ball and did not create the situation that the ball is in game. When wind tunnel tests were conducted in Japan, Australia and California, this showed that the ball has a tendency to slow down midflight, so it has been called rubbish.
Secretary General Jerome Valcke said that they are not deaf and that FIFA is not unreceptive about what is being said about the ball. FIFA has acknowledged that the ball does have its faults.
Even though the Jabulani ball has been pretty much condemned by everyone, several players have actually spoken highly of the ball.
Petr Cech said that he liked the way the ball felt, Kaka approved the contact that the ball gives and Frank Lampard said that it was true to hit.
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