The Jabulani: If you’ve heard of it, you know where this is going. The official soccer ball of the 2010 Men’s World Cup was not popular. It was prone to knuckling at high speed, which made long passes and hard shots behave unpredictably. Goalkeepers in particular were furious. This episode of Big Deal talks about how that played out, but it’s also interesting to remember why.
Adidas produced and marketed THE soccer ball, truly. If you close your eyes and imagine a soccer ball, you’re probably picturing an orb of black and white pentagons and hexagons. That’s the Adidas Telstar, which they started producing in the late 1960s. It’s so rare to come up with such an iconic piece of equipment, and yet in the early 2000s, Adidas started to futz with the design. Gentle tweaks below the surface gave way to more obvious changes, which culminated in the widely loathed Jabulani in 2010.
Let’s talk about how the Jabulani failed, but also why it came to be in the first place.
