Culture

Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka meet at a tennis coaching crossroads in Beijing

Published

3 months ago

October 2, 2024

Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka meet at a tennis coaching crossroads in Beijing

The ‘other guy’ theory of coaches is a sporting truism.

A team that loses more than it wins with a so-called ‘players’ coach’, someone who specializes in relating to athletes and creating an easygoing atmosphere, will often replace them with a disciplinarian. Reserved coaches who don’t find success get replaced by high-energy, emotional types big on motivation. The bookish sort who focusses on the X’s and O’s comes back when that act wears thin.

Tennis players are no different, the latest cases being Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka, who dueled on Tuesday in Beijing at the penultimate WTA 1000 tournament of the year.

Both players entered the year with high hopes but did not meet them. After early eliminations from the U.S. Open — Gauff lost in the fourth round, Osaka in the second — they both announced coaching changes.

Gauff jettisoned Brad Gilbert, one of the biggest personalities in the sport. He is an ESPN commentator and the former coach of Andy Roddick and Andre Agassi, with a grand unified theory of tennis, otherwise known as Winning Ugly. Gauff then brought in Matt Daly, a little-known grip specialist, to work alongside Jean-Christophe Faurel, the low-profile French coach who has worked with Gauff on and off since she was 14.

Faurel most recently rejoined Gauff’s entourage last spring, to work alongside Gilbert. Gilbert and Gauff barely knew each other when she hired him in the summer of 2023. Weeks later, she was U.S. Open champion.

Osaka, meanwhile, pivoted from Wim Fissette, the quiet, cerebral Belgian who helped her win two Grand Slam titles in 2020 and 2021. Fissette would be fine if he never appeared on television. Osaka’s new coach is Patrick Mouratoglou, the former coach of Serena Williams. He has a gift for motivation and self-promotion, with a brand empire that includes an academy in the south of France, plus the freewheeling Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) tennis exhibition events and coaching camps at luxury resorts.

Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka have made coaching changes, but from different tennis perspectives. (Yanshan Zhang / Getty Images)

He was almost too recognizable for Osaka. Mouratoglou’s history with Williams and his presence in the game made her want to avoid him.

“His persona is so big,” Osaka said in a press conference in Beijing. So big that she was skeptical of his coaching abilities: anyone coaching the greatest female player of the modern era might have enjoyed their part in the success of Williams.

“Then I met him, talked to him, worked with him on the court,” she said.

“He absolutely is a really good coach.”

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John Kerry, the longtime senator, U.S. secretary of state and American climate czar, once reduced his philosophy of governing, war and diplomacy to, essentially, ‘getting things right as quickly as you can when you are wrong’.

Sporting aphorists often cite the first law of holes: when you are in one, stop digging.

Both basically sum up Osaka’s and Gauff’s coaching pivots. Players usually make these moves once the season ends, rather than with another two months to go. Gauff and Osaka are on the Asian swing, which is especially important for Osaka, Japan’s torchbearer at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago. Then come the WTA Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which Gauff may qualify for, and the Billie Jean King Cup in Malaga, Spain, which Osaka plans to play.

But by mid-September, they already had all the data they needed to conclude that they were either heading in the wrong direction (Gauff) or stalling (Osaka).

While Gauff’s results were off target — with a fourth-round exit at Wimbledon to Emma Navarro before Donna Vekic defeated her in the third-round of the Paris Olympics — the bigger issue was of technique. Gilbert’s ability to cover up her weaknesses, one of his greatest strengths as a coach, had faded.

Quality opponents had figured out how to counter the looping forehand that he introduced to cover up her shakiness on that side. They would step in and take the ball on the rise, before it bounced high enough to trap them at the back of the court.

Against Navarro at Wimbledon, she pleaded with Gilbert to tell her something, realizing in the moment that she did not have the tools she needed to escape Navarro.

Then there is her serve. At the U.S. Open, her fourth-round defeat to Navarro included 19 double faults.

“I don’t want to lose matches like this anymore,” she told reporters afterwards.

Gilbert, who has forgotten more about tennis than most people know, would never peddle himself as a serve specialist, or even the kind of coach that someone as mired in technical limitations as Gauff is right now would need. Even during Gilbert’s tenure, Gauff had worked with Roddick on some minor serve adjustments.

In an interview last week, Gilbert declined to get specific about his work with Gauff, but said it was a positive experience overall.

He believes that the ultimate parameters of tennis have not changed. Players have to figure out their strengths, then they have to figure out what their opponent does well. Then they plan to impose their own strengths on the match, while nullifying those of their opponent. But at 63, after more than four decades around the pro game, Gilbert knows the drill. Once a player wins one of the Grand Slams, expectations rise, even though the competition remains fierce. Everyone wants to win and there are only four majors each year.

The women’s game has a little more unpredictability, Gilbert said, but still, “there isn’t a lot of opportunity”.

“Each coaching experience is a unique experience and you move on,” he added. “That is a beautiful thing.”

Gauff, still only 20 years old, is impatient for success but she is taking the long view. She is approaching the fall tournaments in Asia as an extended pre-season, prioritizing improvement over wins and a top-eight finish for the season, which would qualify her for those season-ending tour Finals.

Coco Gauff’s forehand has long been a vulnerability against top-level opponents. (Yanshan Zhang / Getty Images)

Her team prefers that her coaches speak little about her; she is finding that the subtle changes Daly has made have already begun to pay dividends.

Daly, 45, played at Notre Dame and briefly coached Denis Shapovalov. He is the founder of a company that sells a gadget called GripMD, which wraps around the handle of a racket to help players use a traditional continental grip.

Gauff hits her forehand with a heavy western grip, essentially holding the racket underneath the handle. Don’t look for her to switch to a continental grip on her forehand anytime soon — it just doesn’t cut it. Her immediate focus is her serve, but it might take some time before the dividends show up on the stats sheets. She had six double faults and 27 unforced errors across the two sets Tuesday, which she and Osaka split before Osaka retired with a back injury.

If Gauff is taking the long view, Osaka wants results now. It wasn’t always this way.

She has been handed tough draws all season, most notably when she came within a point of knocking Iga Swiatek out of the French Open. At the time, she was introspective, coining a little aphorism of her own: the results weren’t resulting, she told reporters. Fissette and Osaka were focussing her comeback in the long lens — for this season and the next five years. Wait for summer and fall, when tennis moves to the hard courts on which Osaka built her reputation, was the mantra.

That waiting steadily chipped away at Osaka’s confidence. After Karolina Muchova defeated her in New York, she told reporters that a part of her dies when she loses. That Osaka was not the wry, magnanimous Osaka of Paris. The French Open was a lifetime ago in her world, and she had believed that she would have more success on her favorite surface. Muchova, who floated to the U.S. Open semifinals and was likely one stuck volley away from the final, is pretty much doing what Osaka wants to be doing.

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Osaka and the rest of the locker room know she needs to return better, improve her second serve and regain the confidence that, in her best moments, made her an absolute banker in crunch time. More than anything, that had been her superpower, and it’s been mostly missing this year.

This is why she switched to Mouratoglou with two months to go in the 2024 season. She is world No. 73, and desperately wants to get into the top 32, so she can be seeded at the Australian Open in January.

Fissette, her former coach, is known as a master strategist and tennis technician. Confidence comes from results in his world. He shares with Mouratoglou a belief in playing aggressively, and building that intensity up when it brings results, but he is no one’s definition of a hype man. Mouratoglou could get a letter carrier fired up about delivering the mail.

The China Open is Naomi Osaka and Patrick Mouratoglou’s first official tournament together. (Robert Prange / Getty Images)

Osaka had considered hiring Mouratoglou before she linked back up with Fissette, when she was plotting her comeback from maternity leave. She went with the Belgian then because of their history of success. When it didn’t return, she and Mouratoglou worked together in California after the U.S. Open, then decided to take on the women’s tour together.

“I don’t want to have regrets,” Osaka added last week in Beijing.

“I really need to learn as much as possible in this stage of my career. Patrick seemed like the guy with the information.”

They were off to a good start, with three consecutive wins, including Osaka’s first comeback from a set down in over two years, against Yulia Putintseva. But even the best coach can’t have much success with an injured player.

After shaking hands with Gauff at one set all, before the American carried her bag off court, Osaka said that her back had stiffened to the point of locking in practice. She was able to start but her condition worsened as the match wore on.

“Totally worth it though lol,” she wrote on Threads.

Sounds like something Mouratoglou would say.

(Top photo: Yanshan Zhang / Getty Images)

Culture

Grand Slam prize money is enormous. The economics of tennis tournaments is complicated

Published

20 minutes ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

Grand Slam prize money is enormous. The economics of tennis tournaments is complicated

Four times a year, one of the biggest and most important tennis tournaments in the world sends out an announcement full of dollar signs and zeroes with the words “record prize money” scattered liberally.

The four Grand Slams, the first of which begins Sunday in Melbourne, are the high points of the tennis calendar. Players at the 2025 Australian Open will compete for $59million (£47m) this year — over $6.2m more than last year. In 2024, the four tournaments paid out over $250m between them, while their leaders spent the year aligning themselves with the players who make their events unmissable, whose gravity pulls in the broadcast deals and sponsorships, with their own dollar signs and zeroes.

Led by Australian Open chief Craig Tiley, the Grand Slams led the movement for a so-called premium tour which would pare down the overloaded tennis calendar and guarantee top players always being in the same events, let alone time zones. It would also lock swaths of the globe out of the worldwide spectacle that tennis represents.

The great irony is that despite the largesse and the cozy relationship, the players get a smaller cut of the money at the Grand Slams than they do in most of the rest of the rest of that hectic, endless season — and a fraction of what the best athletes in other sports collect from their events. The Australian Open’s prize pool amounts to about a 15-20 percent cut of the overall revenues of Tennis Australia, the organization that owns and stages the tournament, which accounts for nearly all of its annual revenue. The exact numbers at the French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open vary, but that essential split is roughly a constant. The 2023 U.S. Open had a prize pool of $65m against earned revenue from the tournament that came out at just over $514m, putting the cut at about 12 percent. The U.S. Open accounted for just under 90 percent of USTA revenues that year.

The explanations from the Grand Slams, which collectively generate over $1.5bn (£1.2bn) a year, run the gamut. They need to dedicate hundreds of millions of dollars each year to fund junior tennis development and other, less profitable tournaments in their respective nations — an obligation pro sports leagues don’t have. There is a constant need to upgrade their facilities, in the silent race for prestige and primacy of which the constant prize money one-upmanship is just one element.

Aryna Sabalenka with her winner’s check at the 2024 U.S. Open. (Emaz / Corbis via Getty Images)

That dynamic is not lost on players — least of all Novak Djokovic, the top men’s player of the modern era and a co-founder of the five-year-old Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA).

“I’m just going to state a fact,” Djokovic said during a post-match news conference in Brisbane last week. “The pie split between the governing bodies in major sports, all major American sports, like NFL, NBA, baseball, NHL, is 50 percent. Maybe more, maybe less, but around 50 percent.

“Ours is way lower than that.”

Since 1968, the first year in which the four majors offered prize money as part of the Open Era’s embrace of professional tennis players, the purses have only grown. The 1968 French Open was the first to offer prize money, with Ken Rosewall earning just over $3,000 for beating Rod Laver in the final. The women’s singles champion, Nancy Richey, was still an amateur player, so could not claim her $1,000 prize. By 1973, lobbying from Billie Jean King helped convince the U.S. Open to make prize money equal for men and women through the draws; it took another 28 years for the Australian Open to do so year in, year out. Venus Williams’ intervention helped force the French Open and Wimbledon to follow suit in 2007.

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Fifty years after Rosewall’s triumph in Paris, the 2018 men’s champion Rafael Nadal took home $2.35million, an increase of over 73,000 percent. The year-on-year increases at each major are more modest, usually between 10 and 12 percent, but that percentage of tournament revenue remains steadfast, if not entirely immovable.

The Grand Slams argue that there are plenty of hungry mouths at their table, many more than just the 128 players that enter each singles draw each year.

“Tennis Australia is a not-for-profit and a business model built on significant investment into delivering the event and promoting the sport to drive momentum on revenue and deliver consistently increasing prize money,” Darren Pearce, the organization’s chief spokesperson, said in a statement this week.

Money from the Australian Open also helps fund tournaments in Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart, as well as the United Cup, the combined men’s and women’s event in Perth and Sydney. Pearce said the prize money increases outpace the revenue growth.

The Grand Slams also point to the millions of dollars they spend on player travel, housing, transportation and meals during tournaments, though team sport athletes receive those as well. Eloise Tyson, a spokesperson for the All England Lawn Tennis Club, which stages Wimbledon, noted that overall Grand Slam prize money had risen from $209million in 2022 to $254m last year, a 22 percent increase.

“Alongside increasing our player compensation year-on-year, we continue to make significant investment into the facilities and services available for players and their teams at The Championships,” Tyson wrote in an email.

Officials with France’s tennis federation, the FFT, which owns the French Open, did not respond to a request for comment.

Brendan McIntyre, a spokesman for the United States Tennis Association, which owns the U.S. Open, released a statement this week touting the USTA’s pride in its leadership on player compensation, including offering equal prize money and the largest combined purse in tennis history at the 2024 US Open. A first-round exit earned $100,000, up 72 percent from 2019. Just making the qualifying draw was good for $25,000.

“As the national governing body for tennis in the U.S, we have a broader financial obligation to the sport as a whole,” the organization said.

“The USTA’s mission is to grow tennis at all levels, both in the U.S. and globally, and to make the sport accessible to all individuals in order to inspire healthier people and communities.”

The infrastructure required to stage a Grand Slam tournament is vast — on and off the court. (Glen Davis / Getty Images)

None of the organizations outlined a specific formula for determining the amount of prize money they offered each year, which is roughly the same as a percentage of their parent organizations overall revenues. That may be a coincidence, though the Grand Slams also have the benefit of not facing any threat to their primacy.

The USTA’s statement gestures at how the structure of tennis contributes to this financial irony. In soccer, countries and cities bid to host the Champions League and World Cup finals; the Olympics changes every four years and even the Super Bowl in the NFL moves around the United States, with cities and franchises trying to one-up one another.

The four Grand Slams, though, are the four Grand Slams. There are good reasons for this beyond prestige: the infrastructure, both physical and learned, required to host a two- or three-week event at the scale of a major year in, year out is available to a vanishingly small number of tennis facilities around the world. There is no opportunity for another organization or event to bid to replace one of the Grand Slams by offering a richer purse or other amenities.

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This dynamic has been in place for years and has become more important in recent months. The PTPA has hired a group of antitrust lawyers to evaluate the structure of tennis. The lawyers are compiling a report on whether the the sport includes elements that are anti-competitive, preparing for a possible litigation with the potential to remake the sport.

The ATP and WTA Tours, which sanction 250-, 500- and 1000-level events as well as the end-of-season Tour Finals, give players a larger share of revenue. There is some disagreement between players and officials over how much it is and the methods of accounting; some player estimates hover around 25 percent, while tour estimates can be in the range of 40 percent. Both remain short of the team equivalents in the United States.

On the ATP Tour, the nine 1000-level tournaments have a profit-sharing agreement that, in addition to prize money, gives players 50 percent of the profits under an agreed-upon accounting formula that sets aside certain revenues and subtracts certain costs, including investments the tournaments make in their facilities. The WTA does not have such an agreement. It outlines a complex prize money formula in its rule book with pages of exceptions, not based on a guaranteed share of overall tour revenues.

The tours have argued that because media rights payments constitute a lower percentage of revenues than at the Grand Slams, and because the costs of putting on tournaments are so high, a 50-50 revenue share would simply turn some tournaments into loss-making entities and make tennis unsustainable as a sport.

James Quinn, one of the antitrust lawyers hired by the PTPA, said he saw serious problems with the model, describing a structure that prevents competition from rival tournaments.

Some events outside the 52-week program of tournaments — which see players earn ranking points as well as money — have official status (the Laver Cup is sanctioned by the ATP). But the remainder, such as the Six Kings Slam in Riyadh, which debuted this year and offered record prize money of over $6million to the winner, are not sanctioned, for now providing only a peripheral form of competition to ruling bodies’ control of the sport.

Jannik Sinner took home the money at the inaugural Six Kings Slam in Riyadh. (Richard Pelham / Getty Images)

The Grand Slams, ATP and WTA insist this is for the best. They see themselves as caretakers of global sport trying to bring some order where chaos might otherwise reign.

Djokovic doesn’t totally disagree. He understands tennis is different from the NBA. He’s led the Player Council at the ATP, which represents male professionals, and he has seen how the sausage gets made and how complicated it is with so many tournaments of all shapes and sizes in so many countries. At the end of the day, he still thinks players deserve more than a 20-percent cut, especially since the Grand Slams don’t make the kinds of contributions to player pension plans or end-of-the-year bonus pools that the ATP does, nor do they provide the year-round support of the WTA.

“It’s not easy to get everybody in the same room and say, ‘OK, let’s agree on a certain percentage,’” he said of the leaders of tournaments.

“We want more money, (but) they maybe don’t want to give us as much money when we talk about the prize money. There are so many different layers of the prize money that you have to look into. It’s not that simple.”

(Photos: Kelly Delfina / Getty Images, Steven / PA via Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)

Culture

6 New Books We Recommend This Week

Published

9 hours ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

Our recommended books this week tilt heavily toward European culture and history, with a new history of the Vikings, a group biography of the Tudor queens’ ladies-in-waiting, a collection of letters from the Romanian-born French poet Paul Celan and a biography of the great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. We also recommend a fascinating true-crime memoir (written by the criminal in question) and, in fiction, Rebecca Kauffman’s warmhearted new novel about a complicated family. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles

One of Europe’s most important postwar poets, Celan remains as intriguing as he is perplexing more than 50 years after his death. The autobiographical underpinnings of his work were beyond the reach of general readers until the 1990s, when the thousands of pages of Celan’s letters began to appear. The scholar Bertrand Badiou compiled the poet’s correspondence with his wife, the French graphic artist Gisèle Lestrange-Celan, and that collection is now available for the first time in English, translated by Jason Kavett.

NYRB Poets | Paperback, $28

Wilson’s biography of the German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) approaches its subject through his masterpiece and life’s work, the verse drama “Faust” — widely considered perhaps the single greatest work of German literature, stuffed to its limits with philosophical and earthy meditations on human existence.

Bloomsbury Continuum | $35

Through a series of vignettes, Kauffman’s fifth novel centers on a woman determined to spend Christmas with her extended family, including her future grandchild and ex-husband, and swivels to take in the perspectives of each family member in turn.

People love the blood-soaked sagas that chronicle the deeds of Viking raiders. But Barraclough, a British historian and broadcaster, looks beyond those soap-opera stories to uncover lesser-known details of Old Norse civilization beginning in A.D. 750 or so.

Norton | $29

Fifteen years ago, Ferrell gained a dubious fame after The New York Observer identified her as the “hipster grifter” who had prowled the Brooklyn bar scene scamming unsuspecting men even as she was wanted in Utah on felony fraud charges. Now older, wiser and released from jail, Ferrell emerges in this captivating, sharp and very funny memoir to detail her path from internet notoriety to self-knowledge.

St. Martin’s | $29

In her lively and vivid group biography of the women who served Henry VIII’s queens, Clarke, a British author and historian, finds a compelling side entrance into the Tudor industrial complex, showing that behind all the grandeur the royal court was human-size and small.

Culture

Is Mikel Arteta right – do footballs really make a difference to performance?

Published

17 hours ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

Is Mikel Arteta right – do footballs really make a difference to performance?

This article was updated on January 9 to reflect the ball being used in Sunday’s FA Cup third round game between Arsenal and Manchester United.

Mikel Arteta was in no doubt.

Arsenal’s manager was dissecting a painful 2-0 home defeat against Newcastle United in Tuesday’s Carabao Cup semi-final first leg when — unprompted by any journalist in the room — he raised an unlikely issue that, he felt, helps explain his team’s inability to convert any of their 23 shots on the night into goals.

“We also kicked a lot of balls over the bar, and it’s tricky that these balls fly a lot, so there are details that we can do better,” Arteta said in the post-match press conference.

When asked to expand on his comments later, he added: “(The Carabao Cup ball) very different to a Premier League ball, and you have to adapt to that because it flies differently. When you touch it, the grip is also very different, so you adapt to that.”

Arsenal were certainly profligate, with Gabriel Martinelli, Kai Havertz and Jurrien Timber all spurning fine opportunities. But was the ball being used — the Orbita 1, made by German manufacturer Puma — really to blame?

Newcastle forwards Alexander Isak and Anthony Gordon seemed to have no issues with it as they converted their own side’s chances, and the ball hadn’t held Arsenal back in previous rounds in the competition, where they scored 11 goals in three games against Preston North End, Bolton Wanderers and Crystal Palace.

Arteta’s complaints were met with a sceptical response in many quarters, not least from the English Football League (EFL), which organises the Carabao Cup, English football’s No 2 cup competition after the FA Cup.

“In addition to the Carabao Cup, the same ball has been successfully used in other major European leagues, including both Serie A and La Liga and our three divisions in the EFL,” it said in a statement. “All clubs play with the same ball (in the competition), and we have received no further comments of this nature following any of the previous 88 fixtures which have taken place in this season’s Carabao Cup.”

Puma is yet to respond to The Athletic’s request for comment.

But was Arteta’s outburst so outlandish? There are, after all, two external factors (aside from the players) which materially affect the outcome of a football match — the pitch and the ball. It stands to reason, therefore, that any unexpected variation in either of those could potentially influence the outcome.

As Premier League clubs, Arsenal and Newcastle are used to training and playing with the Nike Flight ball. U.S. company Nike has supplied the footballs used in England’s top flight since the 2000-01 season, when it replaced British firm Mitre as ball manufacturer, and players have prepared for and played with its balls in league matches ever since. Occasionally, however, they are obliged to change.

Arsenal also feature in the Carabao Cup, FA Cup and Champions League this season, with a different ball (made by other manufacturers) used in each instance. In addition to Puma’s Orbita 1, Adidas supplies the balls for the Champions League and Mitre for the FA Cup.

On Thursday, it was confirmed that the ball being used in Sunday’s third-round tie with Manchester United at the Emirates Stadium would be a special gold edition of the Ultimax Pro model — a nod to United having won the competition last season.

Something for the winners… 🏆
As current holders of @EmiratesFACup 23/24 season, @ManUtd will play with this gold limited edition Ultimax Pro match ball in the 3rd round tie against Arsenal on Sunday.
Advertisement

Let’s see if they can take it all the way to the final… pic.twitter.com/LlekjNQAZh
— Mitre Sports (@MitreSports) January 9, 2025

Though they all have similar dimensions and are made from similar materials, slight alterations in design can make a marked difference.“The more ‘perfect’ a ball is, the more likely it is to be erratic,” says Justin Lea, founder of ball manufacturer Hayworth Athletic. “They all have their own personalities. If you look at the FIFA ball rules, there are ranges for everything. A ball can only retain a certain amount of water if a field is wet. There’s a range to the sphericity of the ball and the bounce of the ball.”

The game’s laws state a regulation size-5 ball must be 68-70cm (26.8-27.6in) in circumference and weigh between 410 and 450 grams (14-16 oz) at the start of the match. It must also be inflated to a pressure of 0.6-1.1 bars at sea level.

The Premier League is using the Nike Flight 2024 ball (Matt McNulty/Getty Images)

“There’s a certain amount of intuition with a ball,” says Lea. “The Brilliant Super from Select, for example, kind of goes where you want it to go. But the more ‘perfect’ a ball is, the more likely it is to be erratic. Some with thermal bonding technology and higher-end materials can get so spherical that the dynamics and the trajectory change. They can go in a lot of different directions.”

At the 2010 men’s World Cup in South Africa, it wasn’t just the honking sound of fans blowing vuvuzelas, a trumpet-like musical instrument, in the crowd that dominated discussion. Adidas’ now infamous Jabulani was also a hot topic, becoming arguably the most recognised and disputed ball in the sport’s modern history.

The Jabulani consisted of eight thermally bonded panels with a textured surface (named Grip ‘n’ Groove by Adidas), which were said to improve aerodynamics. For the players in that World Cup, however, it proved to be a nightmare, with goalkeepers and outfield players alike complaining about the balls swerving uncontrollably after being kicked.

“It’s sad that such an important competition has such an important element like this ball of appalling condition,” said Iker Casillas, whose Spain side would go on to win the final, in comments reported by the BBC. According to Brazilian news outlet O Globo, meanwhile, Brazil player Julio Cesar described it as “horrible” and like “the ones sold in supermarkets”.

Casillas did not like the 2010 World Cup’s Jabulani ball (Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images)

One of the most vehement opposers was former Liverpool midfielder Craig Johnston, who became an expert in the appliance of science to football equipment after his playing career ended and helped design the original Adidas Predator boot. In a 12-page letter of complaint to world football governing body FIFA’s then president Sepp Blatter that was acquired by UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph, Johnston wrote, “Whoever is responsible for this should be taken out and shot for crimes against football.”

The general contemporary opinion surrounding the Jabulani was that it was not fit for purpose, but it was not universally disliked.

Clint Dempsey, who sneaked a shot under goalkeeper Rob Green’s body to equalise in the USMNT’s 1-1 group-stage draw with England, said in a pre-tournament press conference reported by FOX Sports: “If you just hit it solid, you can get a good knuckle on the ball… you’ve just got to pay a little bit more attention when you pass the ball sometimes.”

It also provided former Uruguay and Manchester United striker Diego Forlan with his defining tournament.

His former national-team colleague Diego Abreu told Uruguayan outlet El Futbolero in 2020 that Forlan got Adidas to send him a Jabulani three months before the World Cup started, and that he would practise shooting and taking free kicks with it. As it transpired, Forlan finished as the tournament’s joint-top scorer, with his five goals helping Uruguay reach the semi-finals. Such was his mastery of the Jabulani, he also left South Africa with the Goal of the Tournament award and the Golden Ball, presented to whoever gets voted the competition’s best player.

Forlan practised extensively with a Jabulani before the 2010 World Cup (Rodrigo Arangua/AFP via Getty Images)

The Jabulani remains possibly the most extreme modern example of a football’s effect on the quality and trajectory of a shot, and it’s unlikely we will see an outlier like that again. Still, many players feel noticeable differences when switching between different makes of balls even 15 years later.

“When I went to the Premier League, and I started playing with the Nike ones compared to the Mitre balls in the Championship, I found they felt so much lighter,” says former Reading and Cardiff City striker Adam Le Fondre. “I felt like I was going to get a bit more movement with it.

“Mitre balls were more like cannonballs. They wouldn’t move or deviate off plan — they’d act in a straight manner. As a striker, you might want to get a bit more of a wobble on it, or even if you don’t connect with it well, the Nike ball in the Premier League might still have gone in. They gave me a little bit more help.”

It’s not just in football this happens, either.

In October, Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick complained about using new basketballs instead of already broken-in ones in the NBA.

“I’m gonna send in a request for the league tomorrow that we play with worn-in basketballs,” Redick, who previously spent 15 seasons in the NBA as a player, told various outlets in a post-match press conference. “I’m not sure why we can play in real games with brand-new basketballs. Anybody who has ever touched an NBA ball brand new — it has a different feel and touch than a worn-in basketball.”

Lakers head coach Redick was unhappy at using new basketballs rather than worn-in ones (Sam Hodde/Getty Images)

At the beginning of the 2021-22 season, the NBA switched its ball manufacturer from Spalding to Wilson, which was cited as one of the reasons for a slump in shooting percentages across the league. “It’s just a different basketball. It doesn’t have the same touch and softness the Spalding ball had,” said Philadelphia 76ers forward Paul George in a post-match press conference. “You’ll see a lot of bad misses this year. You’ve seen a lot of airballs (shots that miss the hoop, net and even backboard entirely). Again, not to make an excuse or put any blame on the basketball, but it is different.”

It wasn’t long before players became accustomed to the different feel of the Wilson balls, and shooting percentages rose again. Still, it highlights how minor differences can affect elite athletes who are familiar with a particular piece of equipment.

Arsenal used the Puma Orbita 1 in training on Monday during the short turnaround between their 1-1 Premier League draw with Brighton on Saturday and the meeting with Newcastle (who have had extra time to get used to the Puma ball, as they entered this season’s Carabao Cup one round earlier than Arsenal, due to the latter getting a bye having qualified for Europe). But, judging by his comments, Arteta must surely be wondering if he should roll them out sooner in preparation for the decisive second leg at St James’ Park on February 5.

Besides, any extra time his players get with those balls could serve as Forlan-like preparation for next season — Puma has a deal to be the official football supplier to the Premier League from 2025-26 onwards.

(Top photos: Arteta and the controversial Orbita 1; Getty Images)