Every World Cup Puts a New Spin on the Soccer Ball. Why? And What’s New This Year?

On a soccer pitch at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, John Goff rummaged through a battered bag containing his ever-growing collection of official World Cup match balls. He pulled out two in quick succession: the Al Rihla from Qatar 2022, and the latest arrival, the vividly coloured Trionda.

“We’ve got the current one here,” said Goff, a visiting assistant professor of physics and one of the world’s leading voices on the aerodynamics of footballs. His fascination with how these spheres behave when struck began in earnest at the 2010 tournament in South Africa and has never really stopped.

That year’s Jabulani ball became infamous. Its surface was too smooth, Goff and colleagues found, leading to erratic flight paths that left goalkeepers struggling. One memorable example came in Japan’s match against Denmark, when Keisuke Honda unleashed a long, low-spin strike that appeared to decelerate mid-flight before dipping unexpectedly, wrong-footing the keeper.

“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.”

‘It defied physics’

Players were vocal in their criticism. Marcus Hahnemann, a former US international goalkeeper who also played for the Seattle Sounders, was blunt: “That one was maybe one of the worst balls I ever played with.” Attempts to bend the ball, he recalled, sometimes produced the opposite movement. “It just defies physics.”

The frustration was not new. Since Adidas began producing the official ball in 1970 with the iconic Telstar, designed to be easy to track for people watching matches in black-and-white on TV, each tournament has brought a new design, and often fresh complaints. The 2002 ball was dismissed by some as too light. Others have been criticised for their weight when wet or unpredictable trajectories.

So why does FIFA and its partner change the ball every four years rather than settling on a reliable standard? Mike Woitalla, executive editor of Soccer America, has a straightforward theory: “I think they basically want to ramp up the conversation about the ball because they’re trying to sell it.” The current Trionda retails for $170 on Adidas’s website.

Yet not all changes have been cosmetic or commercial. Woitalla points to the 1986 Azteca, the first synthetic ball, which replaced leather and did not absorb water and become heavier. That shift, he argues, genuinely improved the game and player safety in an era when heading the ball was routine.

A ball for three nations

This year’s Trionda, named from the Spanish for “three waves”, has been created for the 2026 tournament jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico. It features just four panels – the fewest ever on a World Cup ball – and incorporates symbolic designs: a blue star for the US, a red maple leaf for Canada and a green eagle for Mexico, embossed into the surface.

Adidas’s global category director for football hardware, Solène Störmann, said the design is intended to capture something unique about this tournament. “Every World Cup is so unique in itself,” she explained. “It’s linked to this kind of ‘la ola’ vibe… This new ‘wave’ of football, as we call it,” with many young players featuring for the first time.

Goff, who collaborated with physicists at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, has already put the Trionda through its paces. Wind tunnel tests in Japan and subsequent analysis, published in the journal Applied Sciences, suggest the embossed symbols and grooves make the ball slightly rougher than recent predecessors. This should generate a modest increase in drag, potentially causing it to travel a little less far.

Unlike the ill-fated Jabulani, Goff believes the new ball is stable and well-behaved. “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, it’s a good, stable ball that I think will be a success.”

Hahnemann, a self-described purist who prefers consistency between training and match balls, remains somewhat sceptical of constant innovation for its own sake. But he acknowledges the commercial and sporting logic. “They’re trying to keep advancing the game,” he said.