Culture

The Unsinkable Molly Shannon

Published

3 years ago

April 5, 2022

LOS ANGELES — Simply as I arrived for our lunchtime appointment, Molly Shannon got here gliding up Larchmont Boulevard on a Trek bicycle, searching for methods to unfold her private model of eccentric pleasure.

I used to be fretting a few fender-bender I’d not too long ago had with my rental automobile, however Shannon informed me to not fear. Wearing a billowy sundress on a Friday afternoon in February, she walked round to the entrance of my automobile and eyed up the scuff marks close to one headlight. Sometimes she waved again at passers-by who shouted, “Hello, Molly!” (It wasn’t clear if she knew these individuals or not.)

Then, in her personal approach, she defined that life can take away nevertheless it additionally offers again.

As a teen, Shannon mentioned she had utilized to a selective personal college — one whose acceptance might need put her on a observe to an maturity of affect and status, if not essentially future roles on TV exhibits like “Saturday Night time Dwell,” “The Different Two” and “The White Lotus.”

Whereas she awaited the varsity’s judgment, she was additionally anticipating the arrival of her Sea-Monkeys, the brine shrimp offered to trusting kids with colourful comic-book adverts that depicted them as unique pets.

And on the identical day she discovered the varsity had rejected her, Shannon mentioned, “my Sea-Monkeys hatched.” She paused and added brightly, “So, you by no means know.”

That blithe perspective has been basic to lots of Shannon’s best-known characters, like Mary Katherine Gallagher, the maladapted however plucky schoolgirl who was her signature position on “S.N.L.”

Shannon, 57, is extra realizing than her oblivious characters, however she shares their willpower to forge forward fortunately irrespective of the circumstances, and that spirit is vivid in her new memoir, “Hey, Molly!”, which will probably be launched by Ecco on April 12.

However earlier than readers get to Shannon’s picaresque tales of her upbringing and profession, they have to first observe her account of one of many darkest days of her life and the auto accident that devastated her household.

As I sat down together with her to assessment the harrowing particulars, Shannon informed me, “It feels very susceptible to open your self for individuals however I wished to be courageous and simply push by way of it.”

On the night time of June 1, 1969, when Shannon was 4, her father, Jim, was driving the household again from an all-day social gathering to their house in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He had been ingesting, and had taken a nap earlier that afternoon. About 90 minutes into the journey, he sideswiped one other automobile after which swerved right into a metal gentle pole. Although Molly and her older sister, Mary, survived with accidents, their youthful sister, Katie, and cousin Fran have been killed within the collision; her mom died later within the hospital.

Shannon lived with family members whereas her father recuperated. When she returned house, college was a blur. “I used to be like, why is everybody so chipper?” she mentioned. “They have been like, ‘The wheels on the bus go — ’ and I used to be like, I’m exhausted.”

Whereas the accident might have additionally ruptured the connection between her and her father, Shannon mentioned that they grew shut within the years that adopted. “Harboring blame or resentment or anger doesn’t do any good for anybody,” she informed me. “He pulled himself up and went on to lift two daughters. He did his best possible and he was pleased with me. I admired him.”

By Shannon’s personal reckoning, her father was a puckish affect — a trendy dresser with a salty vocabulary who crammed the house with Judy Garland music after he’d spent the day on a housekeeping spree induced by weight loss supplements.

Her father cajoled her into outrageous conduct, like stowing away on a flight to New York when she was 13. “He was wild,” Shannon mentioned. “He’d take easy stuff like going right into a sweet retailer and be like, ‘Let’s fake we’re blind,’ asking, ‘Is that this chocolate?’”

But inside their neighborhood, Shannon’s father was considered a succesful (if permissive) guardian. Alison Doub, a childhood good friend of the creator’s, recalled, “In my household, we might say, ‘Jim Shannon’s doing such an exquisite job with these women.’”

Shannon went on to review at New York College’s Tisch Faculty of the Arts and carry out in scholar productions, together with a comedy revue the place she created an early model of her Mary Katherine Gallagher character.

After commencement, Shannon toughed it out in Los Angeles, working as an workplace temp and a restaurant hostess and sometimes touchdown appointments with brokers by working a rip-off the place she and a good friend pretended to work for David Mamet. (Based on Shannon, she was solely busted as soon as.)

Although Shannon believed her future was in dramatic performing, she landed dependable illustration and, finally, her slot at “S.N.L..”

“I used to be searching for shoppers and I couldn’t consider my eyes,” mentioned Steven Levy, who grew to become considered one of Shannon’s first brokers and is now her supervisor. “She was actually bleeding. Her knees have been bleeding and her elbows have been dripping blood. When she did Mary Katherine Gallagher, she was so dedicated that she threw herself into the wall.”

“Hey, Molly!”, which Shannon wrote with Sean Wilsey (“Oh the Glory of It All”), goes on to recount her time at “S.N.L.” She joined the long-running sketch comedy present in 1995, and a number of other of her hit characters — together with the unapologetically over-the-hill dancer, Sally O’Malley — have been in a roundabout way impressed by her father’s theatricality.

Then, as Shannon was making ready to depart “S.N.L.” in 2001, she discovered that her father had come out as homosexual in a telephone dialog with Levy. Weeks later, in a non-public second when Shannon thought that her father was about to share this together with her as properly, he as a substitute disclosed that he had prostate most cancers.

Extra weeks glided by earlier than Shannon discovered the braveness to ask him: “Have you ever ever thought you could be homosexual?”

She writes that her father answered with out hesitation, “Most positively.”

Jim Shannon died in 2002, moments after he had suggested Molly to get married and have kids and complimented her on her small position within the comedy “Analyze This.”

Molly Shannon, who married the artist Fritz Chesnut in 2004 and has two teenage kids, informed me she discovered worth in unfurling her private story from the second of the accident — a tragedy that dictated the course of her earliest years however which she wouldn’t let dominate her life.

“It offers you a resilience,” she mentioned. “You’re in a position to bounce over obstacles. Possibly I wouldn’t have taken that first probability if I hadn’t had these disadvantages.”

Shannon mentioned the crash left her with a way of loss that she’s going to by no means totally be capable of dispel. “I couldn’t consider that good issues might final,” she mentioned.

For instance, she mentioned, “Once I first began at ‘S.N.L.,’ I didn’t need to grasp something up in my dressing room. I used to be afraid this would possibly all blow up. I all the time felt like catastrophe was proper across the nook.”

The author-director Mike White, who has forged Shannon in initiatives like “The White Lotus,” “Enlightened” and “Yr of the Canine,” mentioned that her ebook had a candor that’s uncommon in show-business memoirs.

“In a approach that’s not didactic or earnest or preachy, she’s supplying you with the keys to find out how to dwell,” White mentioned. “How do you progress by way of loss and switch your life into one thing lovely? It made me really feel like I have to cease complaining about no matter bumps within the highway I’ve skilled.”

Shannon will subsequent be enjoying a star persona on a fictional home-shopping community within the Showtime comedy “I Love That For You,” which has its premiere April 29.

To today, she mentioned she thinks of herself as a graduate of “the Jim Shannon college of performing”: “He cherished theater however he didn’t have the arrogance to be a performer,” she mentioned, including that earlier than almost each new gig, “I all the time ask myself, do I nonetheless actually need this? Did I do it only for him?”

However her father, she mentioned, stays the a part of herself that doesn’t care if she is acknowledged for any specific efficiency so long as she is approaching her work with a optimistic perspective.

Neither is Shannon a lot involved about how readers would possibly react to the facet of herself that she reveals in “Hey, Molly!”

By the use of clarification, she shared a narrative from when she was a restaurant hostess, and would invite the purchasers to see her after-hours comedy present.

One visitor appeared like she could be particularly receptive to her materials, Shannon mentioned: “She was an Irish Catholic mom of 5, and I invited her to my present. I believed, properly, she’s Irish like me.”

However the efficiency didn’t get the reception she anticipated. “She was disgusted,” Shannon mentioned. “She thought Sally O’Malley was so bawdy, and the way dare you curl your pants up like that?”

This criticism didn’t trouble Shannon within the least. “I believed, Jim Shannon approves of the whole lot,” she mentioned. “He gave me nice freedom,” she mentioned. “He was like: That’s. My. Molly.”

Culture

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

Published

1 hour 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

10 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

18 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)