When Mexico vs South Africa kicked off the 2026 World Cup, everyone was watching closely – football fans around the world, the players on the other teams... and a small group of scientists from universities in America, Korea and Japan. All watching with bated breath.
For the fans, it was all about the result. For the players, it was all about their rivals. For the scientists, however, it was all about the ball.
Because that opening match was the first game played with the Trionda – the ball they'd spent months studying.
The same, but different
FIFA, football’s governing body, introduces a new ball for every World Cup. It’s partly a marketing exercise, partly a way to improve things for the players, the officials and the fans.
For instance, the Telstar, introduced at the 1970 World Cup, was the first to have different coloured panels so people watching on black-and-white TVs could follow its movement more easily.
The Azteca, used for the 1986 World Cup, was the first to be made from synthetic materials to make it more water-resistant and better able to maintain its weight and shape in the rain.
The Trionda, the ball created for this year’s tournament, is perhaps the most advanced yet.
It has fewer panels and a rougher surface than its predecessors, as well as an integrated and counterbalanced sensor that sends real-time data to the video assistant referee.
But what’s so surprising isn’t how much the advances alter the Trionda’s performance, but how little they change it.
And that’s important, as John Eric Goff, a visiting assistant professor in the department of physics at the University of Puget Sound in Washington, in the US, and one of the scientists who has been studying the Trionda, explains.
“You want the marketing, you want the hype, you want the excitement [that comes with introducing a new ball]. But you also want to design it in a way so it’s not going to behave differently for the players.”
The study he and his colleagues have done bears this out. Along with the Trionda, they looked at the balls from the last four World Cups. Each one has a markedly different design, but they all perform in similar ways.
All of them, except one, that is. The Jabulani.
Used in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the Jabulani became notorious for its quirky behaviour. “[The Jabulani] was a little too smooth,” says Goff. “And that had implications for the way it flew.”
On kicks with little-to-no-spin, most balls follow fairly predictable trajectories. The Jabulani, however, had a tendency to stall or swerve suddenly in midair.
A quirk that, if the kick happened to be a shot on goal, could have a big effect on the outcome of a match, if not the tournament.
The reason for the Jabulani’s erratic flight was the aerodynamic wake it created. With only eight panels and so few seams to hold them together, the air passing over the ball had a much easier path across its surface.
If the ball wasn’t spinning, those few seams were enough to create an asymmetrical airflow around the Jabulani, and those differing airflows were enough to push it off course. “Almost like a beach ball,” is how Goff describes it.
The Trionda has just four panels, though, so it should be even more prone to the same quirk, right? Not according to Goff.
The seams that hold the Trionda together are longer, deeper and wider than the Jabulani’s (his team used laser scanning equipment to measure them).
Those seams, along with the grooves and microtexture etched into the new ball’s surface, have been engineered to ensure the turbulence around the Trionda stays symmetrical enough to keep it on a predictable path.
The seams and texture will create more drag, though, which does have implications, as Goff and his team discovered after testing the ball in a wind tunnel.
“The roughness of this ball is going to lead to a bit more drag for high-speed kicks, like corner kicks and free kicks,” says Goff. “That type of long kick, perhaps even without much spin, might have a bit less range than some of the balls used in past World Cups.”
Into the unknown
All of this begs an obvious question: if the ball’s makers are striving for consistency above all else, why go to the trouble of redesigning the ball every four years?
Why spend all that time (according to press reports, 3.5 years for the Trionda) and money (no official development costs have been confirmed, but the ball retails at £130/$170) to innovate? Why not just use the same ball?
Adidas, the official supplier of World Cup balls since 1970, was contacted for comment, but was unable to provide a response before we went to press. Goff, however, has a theory.
“The idea is you’re trying to find a perfect sphere; it’s just the curiosity of, can we do this? In science and engineering, that’s often the [motivation]. It’s like back in the 1960s – why do you want to go to the Moon? Well, because it’s there.
"Why do you want to reduce the number of panels? Because we haven’t done it yet, and it’s a challenge. Let’s see what happens.”
That’s why Goff and his team will be tuning into the opening games closely. Based on the tests they ran on the Trionda, they have an idea of what might happen.
Now, with the Trionda in play, they get to see how it all compares to the action on the pitch – right through to the final.
Read more:
