Turns out the new ball is called the Teamgeist, or if you prefer the official name, the Adidas +TeamgeistTM.How whiffy is that? They're reserving a special goal ball for one-off use in the final. It’s full name is the adidas +TeamgeistTM Berlin.
Great game between Germany and Costa Rica yesterday. The adidas +TeamgeistTM played a part in the first and fourth German goals, weaving all over the place like a Scotsman on Hogmanay. This is obviously what the ball is designed to do, as Dr Ken Bray points out here. The principles are to do with fluid mechanics and the fact that because the ball has 14 panels, as opposed to the traditional 32 panels, it travels through the air differently. When the ball is struck so that it flies without rotating much, the physics of the ball will make it wobble like a knuckleball in baseball.
They were great goals, too, if you don’t mind the unfairness to goalies, since a ball which moves in two directions in the course of a shot is basically unsavable. For long-range shots the Teamgeist is a doozy; for free kicks, the case is unproven; for goalies, it's the theatre of cruelty at its purest. It says here that adidas will sell 10 million of them. At 70 quid a pop that’s 700 million quid—a lot of money to be earnt by a football.
Anyway, the point is, I’ve written a haiku about it.
The ball swerves.
Then it swerves again.
Oh! The uproar!
Students of the form will notice that this haiku doesn’t have the right number of syllables. I’ve taken my cue from Fifa and brought out a new model just in time for the World Cup.
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