IRVINE, Calif. — At each match during this summer’s FIFA World Cup, there is a person tasked with an incredibly important (and uniquely modern) job: Make sure the soccer balls don’t die.
This is the reality of playing soccer in a post-technological era. The Adidas Trionda, which is the official match ball of this tournament, is a fully “smart” ball — Adidas uses the term “connected” — which means the ball can transmit a record amount of near instantaneous data, assist in making offside decisions in a way never seen before, and offer more statistical insights than any team or fan could reasonably use.
It also means that just like your doom-scrolling device of choice, it needs to be charged.
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But don’t worry: This isn’t a situation where a referee might be absolutely, 100% certain they plugged in the balls the night before the game only to wake up and find out that the outlet next to their hotel bed wasn’t actually powered. (We’ve all been there.)
For each game, more than a dozen of the connected balls will be used as one goes out of play and another goes in. And every ball is charged in a wireless docking station ahead of time, with a ball on 0% needing about 2½ hours to get to a full charge. Once full, the balls are designed to last up to six hours, though they also conserve power by going into “hibernation” mode when they’re on the sidelines and not in use.
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As an added layer of protection, there is also a person tracking the charge of each ball on a central screen. Adidas is quick to point out that it has yet to experience an instance of a ball running out of juice during any previous test uses.
“We know the maximum length of games, we know the maximum weather conditions in all these places, so I think setting those guardrails up of what the ball has to achieve was the starting point,” Tor Southard, VP of performance and operations at Adidas, said in an interview. “There’s lots of fail-safes in terms of the number of balls held in reserve and ready to go. We’re very aware of the maximum conditions that we needed to achieve.”
The Trionda’s technology is an advancement from what was used within the match ball at the last World Cup in Qatar. At this tournament, the integration of its data into offside decisions has already been visible; in the Sweden-Tunisia game, a goal that was initially called off for offside was allowed after data from the connected ball showed that a slight touch from another Sweden player had actually played the goal scorer on. The Qatar ball couldn’t have delivered such a critical piece of information.
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The new chip in this ball is also placed slightly differently. Instead of being mounted in the center of the ball’s bladder, as was done before, the Trionda has its chip embedded into the sidewall of one of the ball’s four panels. Southard said that it was a lengthy process to figure out how best to counterweight the chip so that its presence doesn’t make the ball feel unbalanced or affect its aerodynamics.
The development teams also had to be certain that the non-chip versions of the ball — the ones used by teams in training or warmups, as well as the ones being sold to consumers — play identically to the connected balls.
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“That’s the biggest thing is that the ball flies accurately and predictably over and over and over again,” Southard said. “We did over 300 lab tests with the chip included to make sure the balance, the feel, the rotation, the spin was just as consistent whether the chip’s in there or the chip’s not in there.”
While there have been instances at previous World Cups where players reacted negatively to the match ball — the Jabulani, used in South Africa in 2010, is most notorious for its unpredictable flight — there has been little blowback so far here.
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Most American players, according to a team source, haven’t commented one way or the other on the ball, and the only issue the U.S. team has to be cognizant of is making sure it’s using the non-connected balls during training and the connected balls during its matches. (The balls have different-colored inflation valves, according to a team official.)
“I think a good way to say to the casual fan is that this is like technology in general,” Southard said. “It iterates and it moves very fast. You can imagine how much progress has been made over the previous four years.”
