A Keeper's New Best Friend

With all the chatter about how this new Adidas Jabulani ball would be a nightmare for goalkeepers, I think it's ended up more problematic for attackers -- England's Rob Green and Algeria's Faouzi Chaouchi excepted, of course.

Having played with one for the last couple of weeks in my recreational league, I think I have at least a tiny bit of first-hand knowledge. The ball is extremely light, and moves fast. That lightness and subsequent speed (lightspeed?) seem to manifest themselves in this tournament in at least three ways. First, we're seeing lots of heavy first touches that get away from players and either go out of bounds or to a defender. Second, lots of crosses are being overhit, going over everybody in the box and/or out of bounds. Finally, players are having trouble keeping shots from distance down.

Now, these things always happen in soccer, so I may be perceiving them as happening more often just because of all the talk of how different this ball is. On the one hand, everyone always talks about how different the ball is, but on the other hand, not a lot of goals are being scored. So while "jabulani" means "rejoice" in Zulu, maybe that doesn't translate to goal celebrations.