🌅 The Physics of the Official World Cup Match Ball

SOURCE

Goff et al. (2026)

WHAT TO KNOW

• Every four years for the past two decades, a group of researchers in England and Japan gather to investigate the physics behind what will eventually become one of the world’s most visible fixtures: the official World Cup match ball. The team puts the ball through a series of experiments to test its “drag,” or the amount of air resistance it experiences as it moves. Typically, the faster a ball moves, the more drag it experiences, slowing it down and changing its trajectory. However, each ball also has a “critical speed,” past which drag greatly decreases and the ball enters a more stable flight.

WHY IT MATTERS

• After putting this year’s ball, the Trionda, through its paces, the team found the ball reaches its critical speed at roughly 27 miles per hour, below the 31-40 mph range for the three previous official match balls: Al Rihla (Qatar 2022), Telstar 18 (Russia 2018), and Brazuca (Brazil 2014), and far below the 49-60 mph range for the infamous Jabulani ball (South Africa 2010). Having a lower critical speed means the Trionda’s movement should be more stable and predictable than the previous balls, however, it also means Trionda will lose some range at higher speeds, meaning plays like goal kicks could come up shorter than players are used to.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• Adidas has designed the official match ball for each World Cup since 1970, always basing the design on something called a platonic solid, which are essentially 3D shapes with identical faces that all meet in the same way. A classic soccer ball starts with a platonic solid made of 20 triangles called an icosahedron. Designers essentially shave the corners off each triangle, resulting in the iconic pattern of hexagons and pentagons we’re familiar with today. Trionda is based on a tetrahedron, essentially a four-sided triangular pyramid, which the designers stretched and curved into a boomerang-like shape to create the ball’s panels (this image shows it clearly). Interestingly, 2010’s Jabulani ball was the last time Adidas used a tetrahedron to design a World Cup ball.