For anyone who has watched soccer at all, you have probably seen an amazing goal where the ball looked like it was going to the bottom left corner of the goal but then all of a sudden changes and scores in the top right hand corner. As a soccer player, I found myself wondering if the soccer ball itself has anything to do with this . In my research, I found that how many panels the soccer ball has on it plays a larger role in how the ball glides through the air than we think. Something else that also plays a part in where the soccer ball goes is whether it was glued or stitched together.

Soccer balls used to have 32 panels stitched together, but the soccer balls that were used in the World Cup this summer in Brazil only had 6 panels and were glued together. Since this new soccer balls are getting increasingly smoother, it increases the drag causing it to dip and curve less often at high speeds. The ball is also designed with little nubs to help cut down on the “knuckling effect.”

The effects of the direction of the soccer ball were different though depending on whether it was kicked on the soccer field in Brazil or in a wind tunnel. In a study done by Sungchan Hong and his colleagues at the University of Tsukuba, they found that a soccer ball traveling through a wind tunnel was unaffected by how many panels it had or whether it was stitched or glued together. What effected the ball more was whether or not it was smooth. Soccer balls that were smooth flew more unpredictably through the air than soccer balls with nubs.

As pointed out earlier in my blog, there is a large difference between a soccer ball getting kicked in a wind tunnel and on an actual soccer field and I think this is the largest flaw in this study. Conditions out on a soccer field are constantly changing, unlike in a wind tunnel where they are kept at a constant humidity, speed, ect. It seems to me that their study was too controlled. Constant changes on the soccer field change how accurate the ball is while in the air. So when you watch a pass or shot on goal in soccer, it is hard to tell whether it was the wind blowing or how the soccer ball was constructed. But what also is not taken in to account in this study was how the soccer player kicked the ball. Some soccer players just have the amazing ability to spin the ball in ways people cant even imagine, and no kick is ever the same. So there is no way this experiment could have taken this variable in to account causing the results to be inconclusive.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140529-world-cup-soccer-brazuca-physics-jabulani-sports/