Forget the noise of the vuvuzela distracting the players, it’s more the Jabulani football that is proving the bane of the 2010 World Cup participants so far.
Chief among the Adidas Fifa-approved football’s detractors unsurprisingly are goalkeepers — though England’s Robert Green cannot put it down to his howler in the 1-1 draw with the United States.
“Rotten” said Spain’s Iker Casillas, “unpredictable” commented Italy’s World Cup winning ’keeper Gianluigi Buffon, who went on to say that it was ‘a disgrace that such a rotten ball was being used in such a great tournament.’
Brazil’s Julio Cesar remarked it was of the sort of quality you buy in a supermarket while Chile’s Claudio Bravo thought it was better-suited to ‘beach volleyball.’
The ball doesn’t escape criticism from outfield players either with Slovenia’s captain Robert Koren saying after the opening 1-0 victory over Algeria on Sunday that it was hard to control long passes. He also graciously tried to avert blame for his goal from the Algerian goalkeeper Chaouchi’s blunder by saying the ball had played a role in it.
An Australian scientist Derek Leinweber, based at Adelaide University, concluded after a series of computer tests that the ball goes faster and is more unpredictable than its predecessors. “That means the goalkeeper can no longer really anticipate its trajectory,” he said.
However, it is not all doom and gloom from the players as Cristiano Ronaldo believes that everything will turn out alright. “We just have to adapt, whether it is good, bad or indifferent, I am convinced that things will work out alright, whether it be dribbling, shooting and corners,” he said. — AFP