Craig Johnston’s 12-Page Jabulani Letter to Sepp Blatter

July 6th, 2010 | by: Daryl |

Does anyone out there remember Craig Johnston? If not, you probably should. Johnston was a South African born Australian striker who played in England for both Middlesbrough and Liverpool in the 1980s. After retirement, Johnston went on to design the football boot that would become the adidas Predator. So the man knows his stuff. And he is not a fan of the adidas Jabulani. Not a fan at all.

In fact Johnston is so upset with the impact the Jabulani has had on World Cup 2010 that he’s written a 12 page open letter to FIFA president Sepp Blatter, filled with stats about how many mis-hit passes and off target shots the World Cup ball has caused and the collected quotes from numerous World Cup players about just how much they hate playing with this thing.

The letter is very direct, definitely heartfelt, and more than a little angry. It also includes the best opening paragraph of any letter I’ve ever read:

Dear Mr. Blatter

If a sponsor came into your office before the World Cup and said: ‘We are going to give you a new, perfectly round match ball, the players won’t like it at all, there will be more mistakes made than in any other World Cup, there will be less goals scored, less free-kicks scored, less passes complete, less control by players and roughly 70% of crosses and shots on goal will miss wide and go way over the crossbar. What would you say to them?

I am risking my reputation and goodwill within certain football circles by writing this open letter to yourself and anybody else who is interested in the Jabulani ball issue and why its endorsement by FIFA could ruin the game as we now know it.

Johnston goes on to suggest that maybe FIFA just switch back to an older adidas ball, but keep the graphic design of the Jabulani. I think we all know that’s not going to happen. But in a larger sense Johnston’s letter is a plea for FIFA to think more about what’s good for football and good for the tournament than about what’s good for sponsors like adidas. Even if the full 12 pages of Johnston’s letter aren’t enough to convince Blatter, I’m willing to bet that the significant bad publicity the Jabulani has received will at least make both Blatter and adidas a little more careful in future.

International Football News – World Cup Blog RSS Feed

http://inter.theoffside.com Johonna

But Adidas say that they handed the ball out to everyone to test when it was in development and no one had a problem with the ball. Is this not really the case?

Also, hasn't the bundesliga and MLS been playing with it for months? Do they hate the ball as well?
Bense235

I thought we'd be finally done with this issue. This is obviousely haunting people worse than Janet Jackson's pierced nipple. I've said it a trillion times: Adidas sent hundreds of (free) sample balls to the national FA's in December 2009. They could have gotten used to it.

The ball was developed at the STI of the Loughborough University, England.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/PQA6FG6LEFTSH6VWQEQRQK2B2A Peter

That the ball was handed out early doesn't negate the fact that it's a terrible design. I think the stats from this cup and comments like “the worst ball I've ever seen” from Capello are pretty damning.

I still don't understand what the point of changing the ball was? If it was to make the ball unpredictable and therefore lead to more goals, well it's definitely failed there.
PaulWCB

Being from South Africa, you'd think Mr. Johnston would understand the effects of altitude on the flight of a ball.

It's true in other sports as well: home run stats, for example, are way inflated in the Colorado Rockies' park than they are compared to others, and pitchers hate playing there. Whenever I see a player rocket a free kick over the bar, I am reminded of Coors Field.

Further, I've seen so many freekicks fly over the goal using regular, non-jabulani balls. Another interesting fact is that the majority of the players complaining about the ball are sponsored by companies other than Adidas.

As said before, MLS has been using the ball and I haven't seen complaints out of that league- and most of the players in MLS are of lower quality than the majority of the players in the World Cup!
PaulWCB

It has been used in MLS, but won't be in the Bundesliga until next season. It was used in the 2010 Clausera in Argentina, though.
http://germany.worldcupblog.org/ Jan

Bundesliga clubs with adidas as sponsor used the Jabulani and I followed the Bundesliga closely enough to say that except for the odd and predictable remark by a goalkeeper there were no complaints by coaches, players or whoever and it really wasn't an issue. And teams like Bremen (Nike) or Stuttgart (Puma) also didn't suddenly start complaining every time they had to play an adidas team.

This letter is pathetic.
ThomasSessegnon

Juninho came out in an interview recently talking about the Jabulani. Apparently he bought it, played with it, and found no obvious difference. He was of the opinion that it was an excuse made by the players for the low quality of play.
magnificentjim

the players in mls aren't good enough to know if it is the ball's fault or just another horrible pass/free kick.
http://allthingsephesians.wordpress.com/ James Gregory

Didn't we see the stats on this very blog that the second round was the highest scoring second round in world cup history, averaging more than 3 goals per game? Seems to speak against the idea that the Jabulani has resulted in less goals.

And why is it that the Brazilians didn't have trouble keeping the ball low? If the ball is garbage, it wouldn't matter who is kicking it. The fact that they didn't have trouble indicates that there is nothing wrong with the ball. And not only with the Brazilians, but the Dutch, Argentinians, Portuguese, and Germans, just to name a few, did well to keep the ball low, score, and connect passes and crosses in air. When the ball went flying sky high, it wasn't the balls' fault. It was user error. The player failed to get the knee over the ball. Instead, they were leaning back, so of course the ball is going to go high.
http://openid.ivern.org/javier Javier

While I'm all for not allowing new balls to be used unless they have a proven track record in a major league (say, a year of actual tournament use), this “controversy” has been way overblown. The whiners need to shut up and go ask Honda or Forlan how to kick properly. Seriously, some players put in the work and figured the ball out, and some did not, and as the tournament progressed it became painfully obvious who was in each group as some players kept consistently sailing the ball 20 feet over the goal, and some other players consistently drive in rockets from 30 yards out.
http://www.mcalcio.com Marco P.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't all the players who tested the Jabulani (Kakà, Messi, Villa)… sponsored by adidas?? (SHOCK!)
http://twitter.com/donpat11 don pat

the ball ruins the game…no crosses arrive, shots don't go where they're ment to go, long low passes devent to fast, the “deadly pass” into the goal-area doesn't exist anymore (getting to long all). it needs a bit more space to stop and control the ball in midfield. teams adapted immediatly to the ball. if you're experts you should see that. passes get played into the foot, no more into the space (so no risky passes to gain space). this leads to less dynamic games, because there's nearly no more gain of space. when one teams is finally leading more or less by chance, it turnes to counter-football with more space for the leading teams. that's when it starts to look more or less similar to normal football. so it's pretty easy to defend by closing the spaces in defence. 62 games played now at wc, only TWO got “turned” (first-leading team lost, NED-BRA, NIG-GRE).
by the way…only 4 or 5 of the bundesliga teams are adidas-sponsored. all changed their season performance extremely after introdiction of jabulani. leverkusen and hamburg to the negative, bayern and schalke to the positive.
…seriosly, there should be nothing to adapt to. a big mistake has been made which has to be corrected. this ball is an extrem one, developed for shots only, not considered (or not tested) that his re-gained 100%-roundness after contact makes him bounce extremely and fly weird enough to make most of the games look like youth-games of ten year old kids.