Why this year’s World Cup ball may not fly as far

Much is new about this month’s upcoming FIFA World Cup tournament, which will be held in the US, Canada, and Mexico. It hosts more teams than ever before. It’s the first to occur in three different host countries. And, like predecessor cups for over half a century, it will employ a soccer ball with a brand-new design. One group of researchers that has been testing the physics of World Cup balls for the past 20 years recently studied this new entry, called the Trionda. Made by Adidas, the Trionda features four red, green, and blue panels textured with deep grooves and maple leaf, green eagle, and star emblems to represent the three host countries. Through wind-tunnel experiments, the research team found that this ball improves over previous versions in some ways, but long-distance kicks might not go as far as they did in the past. “The simple picture is that Trionda may very slightly punish extreme distance, but it should reward clean technique and predictable flight,” says team member John Eric Goff, who researches sports physics and is an incoming professor of engineering practice at Purdue University. “Goalkeepers, defenders hitting long passes, and long-range shooters are where I would look first for visible differences.” Researchers used a wind tunnel to study the Trionda ball at the University of Tsukuba. TAKESHI ASAI, SUNGCHAN HONG, AND RICHONG LIU Adidas has been designing new balls for each World Cup since the 1970s. Some of the design changes in the first few decades were aesthetic: The 1986 ball featured graphics inspired by Aztec temples for the Mexico tournament, and 1994’s had space graphics in honor of the moon landing’s 25th anniversary. There were some structural differences too, such as upgraded foam cores and improved water resistance. But by and large, the balls used the same design of 32 pentagonal panels stitched together. That changed in the 2006 World Cup in Germany, when Adidas introduced the +Teamgeist ball. It featured just 14 curved panels