Another staging post on the road to the opening match was reached when Paul Robinson said to the TV stations that the official ball for this World Cup is "goalkeeper unfriendly." I have a hunch that the guys in gloves have been making this complaint since Italia 90, though it wouldn't surprise me if it started even earlier. I suppose they might have a point of sorts.
Bob Wilson thinks that goalkeepers get left looking stupid through no fault of their own nowadays. He told me that while coaching at Arsenal he and David Seaman tried to illustrate the problem to a rep from the manufacturers. They put him between the posts. After the new ball that he was championing had hit him in the face once or twice he began to concede that it moved a lot.
This year's model is the Adidas Teamgeist. It is declared to be perfectly spherical. Robinson still feels that the flight is unpredictable. Although David Beckham had a bit of a whine two years ago, outfield players rarely join in the protest. How often do you hear midfielders saying their inswinging crosses kept going behind because of excess swerve? If they did, everybody would laugh.
There are commercial factors involved, but Beckham may have been offering an honest opinion when he reported that the Teamgeist travels where you direct it and does not have a mind of its own. What is it with goalkeepers? Does their isolated role make them so paranoid and anxious that they will always blame the ball?
There's a chance that Robinson is right. But no one else (apart from fellow goalkeepers) ever laments that the ball ruined the World Cup.
