Jabulani- Celebration?

As the home team, South Africa, marched onto the field on June 11^th, alongside the hopeful Mexico team, the crowd went berserk. The first game of the 2010 FIFA World Cup was just seconds away. It was about to send a wave of football mania all across the world. However, no one would have guessed that outside factors would affect the game as much as they did. Two details, the referees and the new ball, played a tremendous and unexpected role in this international competition. The refs made simple human errors, but is it possible that the new ball had some faulty engineering? Adidas recently came out with this ball, called the Jabulani, Which in South Africa means happiness and celebration. What was special about the ball is it doesn’t have traditional hexagonal stitching. Adidas introduced a new type of covering, where separate, odd-shaped plates are placed on the outside of the ball. This innovative engineering makes it so that the ball, when pumped, is as close to a perfect sphere as possible, when compared to the small grooves and bumps of the original stitching. Was the design too ahead of its time though? Hundreds of players and coaches alike complained that the ball, when struck, moved erratically through the air. This made it almost impossible for players to follow its trajectory successfully. In fact, the ball was blamed for a few goals in the world cup. So, was the new ball a protagonist or antagonist in this competition? For a video that shows just how the ball is made, click this link.