Culture
He Created the First Known Movie. Then He Vanished.
THE MAN WHO INVENTED MOTION PICTURES: A True Story of Obsession, Homicide, and the Motion pictures, by Paul Fischer
The shifting picture might have many fathers, however full custody of the credit score, kind of, has all the time gone to Thomas Edison. And why not? He held the patents, and match the parable: a rumpled American genius whose phonograph and incandescent mild bulb had already basically altered the course of historical past. Paul Fischer is hardly the primary to name that presumption a lie, however he does mount a passionate, detailed protection of Louis Le Prince, the mutton-chopped Frenchman on the coronary heart of “The Man Who Invented Movement Footage: A True Story of Obsession, Homicide, and the Motion pictures,” because the true progenitor of movie. And because the subtitle breathlessly infers, there might be blood — “a ghost story, a household saga and an unsolved thriller” — unfurled with all of the cliffhangers and purple herrings of a scripted melodrama.
As in most issues, the fact is each messier and extra tutorial, and finally sadder. However “Man” begins cinematically sufficient with a single putting picture: a nonetheless from what is usually referred to as “Roundhay Backyard Scene,” taken on the sparse autumn garden of a non-public residence in Leeds, England, on Oct. 14, 1888. A number of figures in Victorian costume stand scattered, their faces blurred by movement; one smeary participant is caught within the act of turning away, his coattails flaring behind him. All 4 have been associates or kinfolk of the person behind the digicam, Le Prince, and the surviving clip, a scant artifact lasting lower than two seconds, is now extensively acknowledged to be the primary recognized movement image.
“A tall, soft-spoken gentleman” with a fine-boned face and florid facial hair, Le Prince educated as a chemist in his native France and would work peripatetically all through his life as a instructor, potter, painter and industrial draftsman. His raison d’être, although, was invention — particularly the creation of a tool he referred to as a “taker” or “receiver” of animated pictures. The mechanics have been rudimentary (one early equipment alone, manufactured from Honduras mahogany, weighed almost 40 kilos) however the limitless potential of it loomed thrillingly, Fischer writes: “Occasions that would beforehand solely be witnessed as soon as could be accessible to be replayed as many occasions as desired. One thing that had occurred on one facet of the planet could be viewable, with only a few days’ delay, by an viewers on the reverse finish of the world. The previous would turn out to be accessible to the longer term. The useless would transfer, and stroll, and dance, and snort, anytime you wished to see them do all these items once more. … No human expertise, from essentially the most benign to essentially the most momentous, would once more must be misplaced to historical past.”
Le Prince’s disappearance stays formally unsolved, although his English-born spouse, Lizzie Whitley, had one working idea: He had cracked the thriller of a machine Edison wished for himself, and was killed for it.
And the way, in fact. However Le Prince wouldn’t be there to witness it, and even earn a centime from the breakthrough that value him almost the whole lot he had in sweat fairness, supplies he might ailing afford and lengthy, painful absences from his household. Lower than two years later, on the age of 56, he boarded a practice from Dijon to Paris and was by no means seen once more. His disappearance stays formally unsolved, although his English-born spouse, Lizzie Whitley, had one working idea: He had cracked the thriller of a machine Edison wished for himself, and was killed for it.
Within the 300-plus pages that comply with, Fischer, a U.Ok.-based producer and movie scholar whose final ebook, 2015’s “A Kim Jong-il Manufacturing: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Younger Dictator’s Rise to Energy,” landed on a number of year-end nonfiction greatest lists, lays out his case meticulously and with many footnotes, although he takes pains to entertain. These two goals don’t all the time jibe, notably when his extra poetic flights of prose come up in opposition to the granular realities of R&D. (No matter you could not learn about silver halides and activating photons, you’ll study.) Unsurprisingly, it’s the human components, not the halides, that register most vividly. Just like the love story between the Le Princes, which appeared like a real romance and a surprisingly equitable marriage for the occasions: Lizzie was a reasonably, intellectually curious engineer’s daughter from Yorkshire who got here to Paris at 20 to review beneath the famed sculptor Albert-Ernest Provider-Belleuse, a mentor of Rodin’s; Louis was a classy pal of her brother’s.
They married and settled in Leeds, the place Louis joined the Whitley household foundry as a draftsman and overseas gross sales agent, although commerce was by no means his forte. (“Commerce held no fascination for him — in reality he would show repeatedly in life that he was a quite poor businessman when compelled to attempt his hand at it.”) The primary a number of of six youngsters adopted, and a harrowing interlude within the Franco-Prussian Struggle, however the prospect of a snug if unremarkable Continental life could be diverted, naturally, by the siren tune of America.
It was after the couple’s migration to New York Metropolis in 1881 that Le Prince began experimenting in earnest, a development that didn’t go unnoticed by his friends. Edison, more and more stymied, made it his enterprise to know what the extra profitable amateurs like Le Prince have been as much as, and his Goliath-style villainy makes for simple mustache-twirling right here — along with his legal professionals, fame and huge assets, he was successfully in a position to carpet-bomb the U.S. patent workplace with pre-emptive claims, and had no small pull inside the justice system — although his ardour for the precise product proved remarkably restricted. His actual pursuits, it appeared, lay in his personal inflated sense of eminent area; if it certified as American innovation, Edison reasoned, it ought to by rights be his.
Really, a number of males (if girls ever entered the equation, it’s not recorded right here) contributed way more to the trigger than the so-called Wizard of Menlo Park, and Fischer provides truthful as a result of many small-fish prospectors laboring away in D.I.Y. laboratories, their strivings a type of hive thoughts of Industrial Age hope and innovation. These gamers be part of a tapestry of boldfaced names, a few of whom — the images pioneer Louis Daguerre, the mendacious California mogul Leland Stanford — straight encountered Le Prince in his lifetime, Zelig-like. Others run parallel or cross by means of on mere coincidence, from the Lumière brothers and George Eastman to Aaron Burr, who as soon as briefly lived in the identical 18th-century mansion in Washington Heights the place the Le Princes settled for a number of years. (It’s additionally the place Lin-Manuel Miranda penned parts of “Hamilton,” although the ebook’s lengthy lens doesn’t lengthen fairly that far.)
Due to historic information, Fischer can say with assurance whether or not a selected day in 1883 was chilly and clear or gentle with an easterly wind. However when the Le Princes lose one son as a toddler and one other baby later beneath murkier circumstances, the web page, because it have been, goes clean. Who can understand how deeply that affected the pair’s psyches, their work habits, their marriage? Barring some improbably wealthy paper path, no conscientious biographer can presume to know for positive, and that’s a hazard Fischer has to navigate: the editorial line between strictly accessible truths and making a useless man come alive. His eloquent, generally excitable writing type goes a great distance when it doesn’t wander away into the celluloid weeds. And the ultimate pages provide, if not onerous conclusions, a bittersweet postscript and even actual catharsis — too late for Le Prince, possibly, however some form of justice nonetheless.
THE MAN WHO INVENTED MOTION PICTURES: A True Story of Obsession, Homicide, and the Motion pictures, by Paul Fischer | 392 pp. | Simon & Schuster |$28
Leah Greenblatt is a critic at giant at Leisure Weekly.
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)
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.
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.
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)
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