The English Premier League is set to end a 25-year-long association with Nike to provide footballs used on matchdays and pivot to Puma from next year onwards. Currently, the EPL uses the Nike Flight 2024/25.
Previously Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta had caused some confusion with his comments when he had talked about the performance of the Puma ball, which had been used in a Carabao Cup game, comments that had caused significant ridicule, even though what the Arsenal manager said was rooted in fact.
What had Arteta said?
In the Carabao Cup semi-final between Arsenal and Newcastle United, the Gunners had 23 shots in total during the match but still weren’t able to get past a Newcastle team that has excelled in the Premier League and recently ended a 70-year trophy drought by beating Liverpool in the League Cup final. After the match Arteta raised a curious point.
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“It’s just different, it’s just very different to the Premier League ball, and you have to adapt to that because it flies differently. When you touch it, the grip is very different as well, so you have to adapt to that.”
Learning from the master
Arteta isn’t the first manager who has made a complaint over how a football behaves in action. In fact, the manager under which Arteta learned his football chops, Pep Guardiola, once famously said that ‘to score with that ball is a miracle’. He was referring to a Mitre ball in an EFL Cup draw against Wolverhampton Wanderers which Manchester City went on to win 4-1 in a penalty shootout.
At the time, and later for Arteta, the English Football League defended both the Puma and Mitre ball, saying that both of them fell within the range of requirements provided by the EFL. But when it comes to footballs, staying within range of the specifications may not necessarily mean that a football might be universally loved.
How different can one football be from another?
The variations in material and design and even stitching, can dictate how a football reacts.
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“There’s a certain amount of intuition with a ball. 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,” says Justin Lea, founder of ball manufacturer Hayworth Athletic to the Athletic.
No football signifies being touted as perfect yet dividing the football world as much as the Jabulani, a ball manufactured by Adidas for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. It had goalkeepers like Iker Casillas and Gigi Buffon all complaining about its movement in the air.
But it also produced some spectacular long-range goals where the ball would often swerve or dip from its path – a phenomenon that was taken advantage of by Uruguay’s Diego Forlan, who unleashed some spectacular long-range goals in the tournament in his run to win the Golden Boot. Since then, footballs have not seen as much of a deviation in standard as the Jabulani advertised and delivered.
Is Puma’s ball a game-changer?
Hardly. There are a few rules that a football must adhere to. Football law has it written that a regulation game football must be size five, be between 68-70 cm in circumference and weigh between 410 to 450 grams at the start of the match. Apart from that, the pressure in the ball has to be between 0.6-1.1 bars at sea level. The similarities end there.
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While Nike says its ball, the ‘Nike Flight’ is made of polyurethane, rubber, polyester and cotton, Puma says that the ‘Orbital’ was specifically designed with fewer seams and larger panels to help players make a better connection.
It is also crucial to note that the same ball that Arteta made the comment over, had been used by Arsenal in three previous games in the same competition where they scored 11 goals over 270-plus minutes of football. The football also wasn’t an issue for Newcastle and their mercurial striker Alexander Isak, who scored for his team in the win.
Will the new Puma ball bring changes to the NBA?
Changes in key equipment in any sport cause changes in the leading statistic of the sport… for a brief period of time. Take the example of the NBA. In the 2021-22 season the NBA shifted from their long-standing Spalding balls to Wilson. The league saw across-the-board dips in shooting efficiency numbers with Philadelphia 76ers shooting guard Paul George, one of the cleanest releasers of a basketball, saying, “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.”
But the NBA’s shooting numbers rebounded soon after and reverted to the league average. The Puma football will also follow a similar path where after an initial period of turbulence, the league and its players will adjust to the unique traits of the ball in the next EPL season.
