2022 World Cup Ball: Al Rihla

https://www.fifa.com/tournaments/mens/worldcup/qatar2022/media-releases/al-rihla-by-adidas-revealed-as-fifa-world-cup-qatar-2022-tm-official-match

by brudgers • 4 years ago

23 45 4 years ago

fifa.com

he_is_legend• 4 years ago

I've never understood why a new ball in introduced only at the tournament itself - where no players have had any previous experience with using it, and any changes it brings - rather than for the qualifying campaign so that any nuance required can already be learned and thus they would get to use to its full potential. For a tournament featuring the best of the best, where the champions of the world are to be decided, changing the equipment that all participants have been used to in the previous years is a weird idea.

AndrewOMartin• 4 years ago

Just try to imagine the most vulgar, dirty, corrupt and cynical reason why it might be that way. You'll probably be right.

jeffrallen• 4 years ago

A mafioso kidnapped the daughter of a manufacturer to force him to blackmail a national football chairman to bribe a FIFA official, because the mafioso owes a favor to an east Asian gang, who will benefit from increased demand for their slave labour in Burmese factories?

Nah, couldn't be. Not dirty enough for FIFA.

KarlKemp• 4 years ago

The site guidelines recommend an assumption of good faith. That’s something that may just be advised more broadly these days, and you are failing it quite spectacularly.

nmehner• 4 years ago

There is only a handful of qualification matches and each league is using a different ball anyways: http://football-balls.com/balls

Probably they are all quite similar and having a new type of ball for a tournament is more about marketing and sales.

endominus• 4 years ago

But having the ball available to practice with would still be useful. The ball can indeed make a difference; I seem to recall quite a stir during the Brazil World Cup when the players kept complaining that the seven-panel ball they were using was uncontrollable - like "kicking around a beach ball."

smcl6• 4 years ago

Depends. CONMEBOL has a pretty arduous qualification process, eighteen matches against the likes of Brazil and Argentina :-O UEFA has ten (and potentially a couple of playoff rounds)

iainmerrick• 4 years ago

Right -- a decent quality football might cost £5-10, an official 2022/23 Champion's League replica ball costs £25.

smcl6• 4 years ago

While I agree with you and believe that this is purely for the purpose of making money, the World Cup is still 8 months away. There are a few rounds of international friendlies where teams can get match practice with the ball, and indeed there are still a handful of undecided places (if everyone can please cross their fingers for Scotland I would appreciate it)

NiagaraThistle• 4 years ago

FIngers are crossed, prayers have been sent, hope is at an all time high. 25 years is a long time to have been waiting.

verisimi• 4 years ago

I've never understood why a new ball in introduced only at the tournament itself

Well, its a simple answer I think - its the way to sell the most amount of balls and maximise profit.

Footballers (all professional sportsmen really) are entertainers - they are there to harness the energy we have for what they do, and turn it into profits.

d--b• 4 years ago

It's because it's BS. A football is a football. They make a new ball to sell it, and the players don't complain cause the changes are negligible in a real world environment. Wind and human imprecision have a much larger effect on a ball's flight than the difference in texture between a regular ball and a world cup ball.

ZephyrBlu2• 4 years ago

The Jabulani is proof that this isn't true. The ball can have an enormous effect.

matsemann• 4 years ago

Why write so confidently about something you know nothing about? Some of the footballs are wildly different in how they curve when you hit them, for instance, which even an amateur will notice.

danlugo92• 4 years ago

I like it. It brings enthropy.

dfxm12• 4 years ago

Obviously they want to sell balls, but in addition to that, adapting to a new ball is a skill that itself can be developed and is regularly put to test.

changing the equipment that all participants have been used to in the previous years is a weird idea.

Does the Italian Serie A use the same ball year to year? Do they use the same ball as the Spanish La Liga? Does either league use the same ball as the Champions League? Usually not. Top players are used to working new balls pretty regularly. It is part of the game.

_Microft• 4 years ago

It's a bit disappointing that they announce a ball with new panel shapes and print and then only show a cropped image, from one side only, as hero image.

usrusr• 4 years ago

I don't think they did, but imagine they designed an asymmetric ball, only incompletely revealing it just long enough that all bootleg manufacturers set up their lines to build an extrapolation of the revealed side and then derail them with a surprise "far side of the ball looks completely different, gotcha!".

Come to think of it, for the print part of it (as opposed to the panel setup) I suspect that an unrevealed surprise design isn't even that unlikely, perhaps with two tiers of "official design" where the premium version is only revealed much closer to the event (with only the lower tier design made available even for training/qualification of official teams). Thinking a bit more of this, I suspect that this isn't me hypothesizing at all, but just murky memories of past cup seasons resurfacing?

fredoralive• 4 years ago

They usually do a special variant of the ball for the final. I don't think the regular ball changes, although the balls used in actual matches at big tournaments have the specific match they're intended for printed on.

bjarneh• 4 years ago

This is a stunning, sustainable and high-quality Official Match Ball from adidas

The only thing about this whole tournament which is sustainable I guess...

luaybs• 4 years ago

Ironically, the laborers that have had their passports taken away from them during the construction of this tournament aren't allowed to make "the journey" back to their homes.

nigerian19812• 4 years ago

They need to bring back the Jabulani from the 2010 World Cup

smcl6• 4 years ago

Wasn't the Jabulani a pretty widely disliked? I remember people complaining that it was quite wild in the air

nigerian19812• 4 years ago

Yes it was, but also fun to watch

Gwypaas• 4 years ago

And the vuvuzelas.

dav43• 4 years ago

Won’t be watching any of the World Cup as a protest towards the terrible treatment of the labourers there and the corrupt process of selecting Qatar.

I only hope others follow.

dataengineer562• 4 years ago

I thought this was debunked and that the death rates were lower per capita than if the migrants had remained in their home countries. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33019838

actionfromafar• 4 years ago

Even if it is debunked, that article is from 2015. What happened the next 7 years?

smcl6• 4 years ago

The poor treatment of migrant labourers in Qatar has certainly not been debunked. I did not hear about the death rate being different, but having your passport confiscated and your wages withheld is about as close to slavery as we are likely to see among developed nations

toxik• 4 years ago

“Oh, they would’ve died anyway” is not a valid argument.

kerrsclyde• 4 years ago

Me also.

And because of the insanely corrupt way it awarded. Bidding for a summer World Cup then deciding (after it awarding!) that it's far too hot in the summer to play football in a desert.

partomniscient• 4 years ago

I've also boycotted sportsball for the same reason.

Its stretched too far. Its about now about the money and power, not playing the game.

Entertainment used to be watching people slaughtered in arenas.

Now the entertainment is watched after people are worked to death building arenas. The death cost for enertainment is still there, just in a different place.

Why is any of this considered entertainment if that's what it costs?

ramblerman• 4 years ago

The ball was designed with *sustainability* as a priority; indeed, Al Rihla is the first FIFA World Cup ball to be made exclusively with water-based inks and glues.

From the same organization organizing the construction of 6 air conditioned stadiums in the middle of the desert...

I wish we wouldn't put up with this kind of lip service, and had a better index of who really gets to make what claim. Instead we just get these press statements which hit all the right words like sustainability/inclusivity at no cost to themselves.

i67vw3• 4 years ago

Need to get the sweet, sweet ESG money.

2022 World Cup Ball: Al Rihla

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