Will the World Cup ball impact soccer betting?

At its highest level of play, soccer is typically a low scoring sport. That’s always been the kneejerk explanation of why it’s been slow to catch on in the United States as a professional level spectator sport, but that’s really an oversimplification. If high scores were all that the American sports fan demanded, Arena Football would have long ago surpassed the NFL in popularity. In the rest of the world, there’s little complaint about soccer’s low scoring nature and to their credit FIFA and the European professional leagues haven’t made silly rule changes to increase scoring.
One thing that has been changed over the years, however, is the ball itself. While individual pro soccer leagues have their own protocol concerning the most important piece of equipment, FIFA has the final say over the World Cup ball. Since the 1930’s, World Cup soccer balls have changed several times to incorporate new manufacturing technologies and to keep up with the evolution of the sport itself. The original World Cup ball was made of 12 individual panels of brown leather sewn together and bears little resemblance to a modern soccer ball.
Beginning in the 1970’s, Adidas has manufactured the balls for the last 11 World Cup competitions. The first Adidas ball had 32 leather panels in the classic black and white design. In the decades that followed, there were changes in the number of panels, use of supplemental man made materials to increase speed and reduce water retention, and a move from stitching the panels together to the use of thermal bonding.
The 2010 World Cup soccer ball, named ‘Jabulani’ by Adidas (‘Jabulani’ is from the Zulu language of Africa and means ‘To Celebrate’) is a technological marvel of 21st century industrial design. It is comprised of 8 panels that are actually molded together which results in what Adidas proudly declares as ‘perfect roundness’. There are also ridges and texturing on the ball added during the manufacturing process. The concern was that the fewer panels would have resulted in a ball that was too slick, and the texturing gives the ball a certain ‘roughness’ or ‘grip’ which helps maintain balance during flight.
So how could this impact World Cup soccer betting? All of these technological advances are designed to improve control, accuracy and speed. In theory, that means more goals. More goals obviously means that more games go ‘Over’ the total, but also that good teams have an easier time putting up margins on less talented sides.
An April 21, 2010 article in the Wall Street Journal had the reaction from a number of soccer bigwigs, starting with Hans-Peter Nurnberg, a technical director at Adidas:That’s great, except for the goaltenders. Kasey Keller has played in four World Cups and currently plays for the Seattle Sounders in the US Major League Soccer (MLS) league which is using the Adidas World Cup ball this season:
“For every shot that dips and swerves and looks great, another 10 miss the target. Can’t we get to a point where we like a ball we have and just stick with it?”
The Chicago Fire’s Brian McBride suggests that much depends on the inflation of the ball:Based on the early season MLS statistics, there appears to be a slight increase in per game scoring. In 2009, Columbus averaged 1.36 goals per game. So far in 2010 they’re averaging 1.8 goals per game. Los Angeles averaged 1.2 goals per game in 2009 and their per game average has jumped to 1.87 so far in 2010. On the other hand, Seattle averaged 1.26 per last season and has dropped to 1.00 so far this year. All of this is inconclusive, however, since the MLS is less than 10 games into the 2010 season and there is any number of interceding factors that could be responsible for the higher goals per game numbers. And, of course, we’re talking fractional increases and not an increase of even one goal per game. In other words, even if the new ball is causing a marginal increase in scoring it’s not something that would have a significant impact on games or the corresponding bets on these games.
At this point, there’s not really anything other than anecdotal opinions of a couple of pro soccer goalies and a thinly veiled sales pitch from an Adidas employee to suggest that the ball will have any significant impact on gameplay and, more importantly for our purposes, on World Cup betting. The technology that went into the design and manufacture of the ball is interesting, but it’s hard to visualize any measurable difference in the games or their outcome due to the ball. For the soccer betting enthusiast, it’s something to be aware of but not a factor that should directly influence the handicapping process.
Nelson Rodriguez, executive VP of competition, technical and game operations for the MLS (how does he fit that title onto his business card?) concurs and offers a perfect conclusion with the following reality check:So for the World Cup 2010 we’ll paraphrase ‘The Who’ by suggesting ‘meet the new balls, same as the old balls’.