On a soccer field at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, John Goff rummaged through a trash bag filled with his collection of official FIFA World Cup balls.
“We've got Al Rihla — that was in Qatar from 2022. And this is the current one, the Trionda,” he said, pulling a green, blue and red soccer ball from the bag.
Goff, a visiting assistant physics professor, is a leading expert in sports physics who has studied how soccer balls move when they are kicked since the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg, South Africa. He and a team of physicists found that the surface of that 2010 ball was too smooth, making its movement unpredictable and difficult for goalkeepers to track.
One example was a goal during the tournament’s match between Japan and Denmark, which Japan’s Keisuke Honda scored on a long kick.
“He had this beautiful kick with very little spin,” Goff said. “All of a sudden it just looks like it slows a lot during the trajectory and it dropped a little bit on the goalkeeper, who missed it.”
During those games, players openly criticized the ball’s design, including Marcus Hahnemann, a former goalkeeper for the U.S. men’s team and the Seattle Sounders.
“That one was maybe one of the worst balls I ever played with,” he said.
Players can kick a soccer ball to make it curve left or right in midflight (think Bend it like Beckham). But Hahnemann said when they tried to do that during those games “sometimes it would go the opposite direction. It just defies physics.”
Adidas has designed a new ball for the World Cup since 1970, starting with the iconic black-and-white checkered Telstar ball, which was designed to be easy to track for people watching matches in black-and-white on TV. The 2010 ball is perhaps the most universally panned, but there have been others people didn’t love — such as the one used during the 2002 games that players said was “too light.” All this begs the question: Why change the ball each World Cup instead of sticking to one that works?
Mike Woitalla has a theory. He is the executive editor at Soccer America, an online publication that covers all things soccer.
“I think they basically want to ramp up the conversation about the ball, because they're trying to sell it,” he said.
This year’s official World Cup match ball goes for $170 on Adidas’ website.
That being said, Woitalla can think of at least one major improvement to the ball used for a World Cup tournament that changed the game. That ball, called the Azteca, was used during the 1986 matches, when Adidas switched the material from leather to a synthetic material that didn’t get heavier from absorbing water.
“I think that was the kind of technology that did make a difference, and, of course, made it safe, since this is a sport where people head the ball,” Woitalla said.
Hahnemann, the retired keeper, calls himself a purist; he wants the ball that he practices with to be the same as the one used during matches. Even then, he does think Adidas’ intentions are to make the game better.
“I don't know if they do, but that's their idea. Right?” Hahnemann said. “They're trying to keep advancing the game.”
Adidas told KNKX that they change the ball, in part, because as soccer evolves, they think the equipment should, too. But it’s also an important symbol of each tournament.
“Every World Cup is so unique in itself,” said Solène Störmann, the global category director for football hardware at Adidas.
“And for us, it's also important that every World Cup gets also seen in that way, and that every one carries an own individual story and an own individual signature to it,” she said.
This year’s design comprises only four panels, the fewest of any World Cup soccer ball. It features graphics for the three host countries: a blue star for the U.S., a red maple leaf for Canada and a green eagle for Mexico. Those symbols are also embossed on the surface of the ball. Its name, “Trionda,” is Spanish for three waves.
Störmann said that symbolism is part of the story Adidas is trying to tell with the ball.
“It's linked to this kind of ‘la ola’ vibe,” she said, using the Spanish word for wave. “This new ‘wave’ of football, as we call it, because we see a lot of new young players actually playing the World Cup for the very first time.”
Back at the soccer field in Tacoma, sports physicist John Goff doesn’t think the Trionda will create the fiasco the 2010 ball did. He worked with other physicists at the University of Tsukuba in Japan to study the ball's aerodynamics. The researchers in Japan tested the ball in a wind tunnel and he analyzed the results, which are published in the journal Applied Sciences. They show that the symbols embossed on the surface of the ball and its grooves make it slightly rougher than its predecessors, which Goff said could cause some minor drag while it is traveling through the air.
“My colleagues and I are very interested to see if these balls travel a little less far than the balls have in the past,” he said.
But generally, Goff said, it’s a good, stable ball that he thinks will be a success.
