World Cup 2010: Jabulani has made this the worst World Cup ever, says Craig Johnston
Craig Johnston, former Liverpool midfielder, designer of the Predator football boot and all-round football technology guru, has accused Fifa of ruining the World Cup with the infamous Jabulani ball
Craig Johnston has been watching this World Cup with something approaching despair. As he has seen passes go astray, crosses over hit and free kicks disappear into Row Z, he has become convinced of it: we have been subjected to the worst World Cup ever. And there is a simple reason for that.
"By my calculations we have been denied at least ten goals that were not scored in this World Cup so far, because of the erratic and unstable flight of the Jabulani football," he says.
And Johnston's statistics are backed up by Opta. The organisation acknowledges that, up to the quarter final, there were more misplaced passes than at any of the last four tournaments.
Johnston – who has watched games both live and on television in his role as analyst for Australian Broadcasting – is so unhappy he has written an open letter to Fifa boss Sepp Blatter (a copy of which he has passed to the Telegraph) pleading with him to remove the ball from competitive action immediately.
"Let me put it this way," he says. "If they weren't using the Jabulani, then there would have been no refereeing error over Frank Lampard's goal [for England against Germany].
"Because if it had behaved like a normal ball, that shot would have gone under the cross bar. And by the way, I've analysed it and Lampard's second half shot that hit the crossbar would have gone in too. I'm not saying England were cheated out of it, they may have lost anyway, but they were denied two goals. By that ball."
Johnston knows what he is talking about. After retiring from a distinguished playing career with Liverpool, the Australian designed, built and set up the original testing laboratory for adidas in Herzogenaurach Germany in the early nineties.
As lead innovation consultant there he created the Predator football boot, the Tragion sole system and tested the original prototypes of the ball used in USA 1994.
It was also at the lab that he pioneered the use of super slow motion footage with Oxford Scientific Films and digital techniques with the Frauenhoffer Institute to study the movement of a ball in flight.
What he discovered was that spin came about because of the way the air travelled over the 180 imperfections formed by a 32 panel ball. The manner in which a player addressed the ball could impart top spin, back spin, curve, dip and swerve.
Dead-ball experts like Ronaldo, Robinho and Lampard may not have appreciated that they were utilising what is known as the Magnus effect, they just understood through hours of practice how to manipulate the ball.
And that was taken away from them by the introduction of the perfectly spherical Jabulani, which, without those 180 imperfections, gives no opportunity to spin. As a result, Johnston believes, we have been watching the game change before our very eyes this past month.
"This ball doesn't reward the craft of the player," he insists. "Sure, the brighter players have worked out how to use it pretty quickly.
"Take Diego Forlan. Against Ghana and Holland he just whacked the ball as hard as he could into the centre of the goal knowing the erratic nature of the way it flies would deceive the keeper.
"It worked. You only had to see the look in Richard Kingston's eyes to see what was going on. He was basically saying: what the eff was that?"
Johnston also believes also that Germany's first goal against England was a product of study of the new ball. The goalkeeper's huge punt upfield wobbled oddly in the air, deceiving England's centre backs.
"It's was route one and it worked," he says. "With that and the shooting, this is a ball that encourages prehistoric football. This ball is nervous, flighty, it does not reward clever play."
What's more, he adds, its speed in the air is deceiving referees as much as it is players. He puts a number of refereeing howlers, including Harry Kewell's sending off for Australia, down to the ball not behaving as anticipated.
"Football is all about texture, flavour and colour," he says. "That has been taken away by a ball sanctioned by who? Fifa and its sponsors. They may have been rewarded by making tens of millions of dollars profit, but the result is they have removed the art and craft from the game."
Johnston concludes his letter to Blatter with the following question: "If a sponsor came into your office before the World Cup and said: 'We are going to give you a new, perfectly round match ball, the players won't like it at all, there will be more mistakes made than in any other World Cup, there will be fewer goals scored, fewer passes completed, less control by players and roughly 70% of shots on goal will go wide or way over the crossbar.' What would you say to them?"
But that, he adds, is what has happened. And it is time something was done, before the game changes irrevocably for the worse.
