StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - 2018 Soccer Tech: Beyond Sports & Telstar 18

Episode Date: April 19, 2018

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel…We look to the future of soccer and prepare for the 2018 FIFA World Cup as we investigate Beyond Sports VR technology and the new Adidas Telstar 18 with hosts Gary O’Reilly, Chuck Nice and Beyond Sports CEO Jeffrey Saunders and physicist John Eric Goff.Photo Credit: © 2018 BEYOND SPORTS BV. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly and I'm Chuck Knight and this is Playing With Science. Football or soccer, whichever you prefer, has not been shy in embracing technology. Goal line tech and GPS tracking have been staples of the modern game for years. But what is on the cutting edge? What are we going to see in the 2018 World Cup in Russia and beyond? Yes, and beyond is exactly where we'll go for our answers as we talk to Jeff Saunders, CEO of Beyond Sports, a sports tech company that works with current world champions Germany and English Premier League giants Arsenal. I think you know those guys. I do. I'm not an Arsenal fan, but we respect the club

most definitely. Right. And giving us a totally unique, well, that was my bias anyway, giving us a totally unique and detailed insight into the official World Cup ball after having put it through its paces is our very good friend professor eric goff who's just published a paper on exactly this subject yeah and it's a long one it is and very detailed yes lots of equations yes which he will explain and not me there we are right joining us by video call is beyond sports ceo jeff saunders jeff welcome to the show. Thank you guys. It's great to be here. Yes, always great to have the tech side of sport with us. So what is Beyond Sports Tech? What sets your tech apart from tech being used by other teams, other sports?

I think first and foremost, we're the only company that's doing exactly what we are doing in the sports space. What we do is we take tracking data and we turn that into virtual reality worlds where teams, coaches can train, can analyze all parts of their game. Broadcasters can bring immersive experiences to broadcast audiences, and fans, of course, can experience the game like never before from any perspective on the field. Wow. So you really have created a virtual world for sports. I mean, this is almost every perspective being represented in the game. Now, are you primarily soccer? Is that – or are you doing every sport?

I think, yeah. We started in soccer or football, Gary, just so you don't get lost in the conversation. We started in soccer about three, three and a half years ago. And about three, three and a half years ago, made a lot of great inroads in Europe with national teams, with leagues, with clubs. And now we're pivoting into other sports. We work in cycling currently as well as soccer and soon to be in basketball and American football. So not only is the experience a holistic experience, you're now branching out horizontally and vertically within the sporting world. So how are teams, how are coaches, how are athletes?

I'll call them athletes because we've gone into more than one area here. Are they benefiting? Are they engaging with your technology? Because there must be a specific reason or several as to why they're hooked into your company's tech. I think from a performance standpoint, we like to speak about what we do as cognitive training. So if you can quantify cognitive acuity, cognitive function, then you can train it. And so we've been able to utilize, again, the tracking data that is now pretty ubiquitous across the sporting scene and professional leagues. We've used that to create

these environments where now we can tap into and then train cognition in professional athletes. And I think that's really the important point of what we do is we're moving from what has been up to this standpoint, a lot of data that has come out and utilized in the sports realm, but it's mostly on the physical parameters of performance. And now we want to move into trying to understand more about the cognition parameters within sports and athletes. I saw a video on your site about a young player.

He might have been a middle schooler. I don't even think this kid was in high school. And using the TET to help with decision making. So kind of what you're talking about right there from a cognitive standpoint. And he was given different scenarios. And then he was shown different perspectives from the field and above. And I was able to help him figure out what his best choice was. So, you know, how do you come up with the scenarios? Are these real game scenarios

that you're presenting to these players to help them with the cognition aspects of their game? Yeah, they're exact moments from games, let's say first team games. So in Arsenal's case, Arsenal is one of our primary customers, lead customers. And we recreate in real time, if need be the exact replica in a virtual world of the game that's ongoing or has been played. Wow. So, so once you once you have this virtual world, if you can imagine, then you as a player or a coach or even a fan can be placed in any perspective. You can see the game as Ozil sees the game. And you can experience what was going on on the pitch at the moment that a particular decision was made.

So what it allows young players, as you're referencing in the academy of Arsenal or one of our other clients, Azed Alkmaar in Holland, certain, you know, certain curriculum that allows them not only to make decisions, but to discuss why decisions, you know, were made or should be made. So the takeaway from it is that we're, you know, we're able to train at a much younger age now, players to recognize, you know, pattern recognition, spatial awareness. You know, we always talk about, you know, you have to check your shoulder to receive more information in soccer. But if you're put into a virtual world where that is the difference between making a specific decision or, you know, a correct or incorrect decision from a team's perspective, then you, again, can start to do the reps and the repetitions

of these kind of decision-making opportunities. And then you get a basis for learning and also a basis for quantifying how a specific athlete, whether it be a first-team player or whether it be an academy player, how well do they, you know, how functional is their cognitive abilities? Yeah. Jeff, in one leap, you've landed on the moon. You've taken this giant step. I'm now sitting here as a former player thinking, what would I do if I'm 15, 16 years of age?

I wouldn't be close enough to the first team to have experience of playing. But you can give me that experience as a teenager pop me straight into a game a real game i'm getting game speed because i can tell you you're used to playing academy games right paces of a lot slower you're in the slow lane yeah then you kind of come up a bit into a development squad that's under 23 and then the big boys kick in this you're just all of a sudden doing 200 miles an hour in the fast lane and a lot happens very very quickly you can watch a game on tv and it looks quite slow put yourself in it and there's no time to think what you're doing is building thinking time through repetition and

understanding familiarity no wonder the guys love this do you have players come to you after games and say, I want to see that back. Can you put me back in my virtual world? And then I can see where I should have been and done. Do they come to you and do that already? Yeah, I think there's a mix. There's players who really yearn for additional information and training. And then there's obviously performance and coaching based staff who feel that certain, you know, certain players need to be put in those situations

as much as possible to accelerate the learning process. So, you know, as an example, you were talking about being a 15 or 16 year old who can't necessarily physically cope with, you know, who can't necessarily physically cope with first-team football from a physical perspective, all of a sudden we can put them in that same environment, as you said, with the game speed, and then you can train them cognitively. And cognitively, a player of 13, 14, 15, 16 can um you know the cognitive functions happening from a first team player so when if the game speed is is is exact and the spacing is exact and all the kind of you know if you think about it the parts within this virtual world are are um authentic to their the real game environment yeah then um you can start to see, okay, which 13-year-old has a high aptitude

on the cognitive side? Which 14-year-old is better at pattern recognition? And then which 15-year-old actually finds solutions that maybe other players haven't found, or even your first team players haven't found? So there's no answer per se, but if you're able to put them in that environment, then when they become physically capable at, let's say, 18, 19, to compete with the first team or play with the first team, cognitively, they've already been there for years. It's like Jedi warrior training.

What's that? It's like Jedi warrior training. You have young Padawans that you're teaching to be Jedi. It is. I mean, yeah. It's like virtual lightsaber training. Without the saber. It is.

It's pretty much going in that direction. I'm just sitting here now and the thoughts occurred to me. The team that wins the World Cup in Russia in 2018, is it the team with the best tech or is it the best team that wins, in your opinion? In our opinion, it's both. It's the team that has the best tech, which is certainly Germany, who they're our clients. They will be bringing Beyond Sports VR analysis and training tools to Russia with them.

They've signed a contract with us late last year for the purposes of having a competitive advantage at the World Cup. So our staff, our team will be there with them. I also think they have a pretty substantial technical and physical roster. So I think they're going to do all right even without our tech. But we think that the addition of the Beyond Sports tech will help them. I think in the British understatement, Jeff, I would go with they have a chance.

Let me ask you this. What would you rather have in the World Cup? One team, thoroughly trained, every scenario cognitively superior, familiar with every unfolding scenario that could happen in a game. The other team plays basically on their instinct, but superior in every way physically. They are faster. They are stronger. They are, I'll say, tougher. Which is your favorite identical twin?

Yeah, exactly. So which one would you rather have? Who would you throw your money on? You've got a World Cup game. This is for the big one. And you've got one team. These guys, they can recognize any situation, they can play, they're more heady than any other team, but the other team, faster, stronger, tougher,

and they're good players, but they just don't have that kind of training. Who would you rather go with? Well, I think it's really a question of how do you see the evolution of sport, really, and with the advent of dad-driven, you know, that I think is pervasive amongst sports and the industry that I work in, of course, we tend to weight, you know, more and more the, you know, cognitive strength of players and teams. Growing up, my love was for teams that were one step ahead all the time and were collectively, obviously, maybe more cognitive than their opponents.

You think of the Dutch in the 70s or you know potentially the hungarians before that um you know there's obviously some great teams in the 80s on the club level um so again it's it's i think it's a more of a personal preference and situational i think you'd probably find a a team that was physically superior would win, you know, four times out of 10 and maybe, you know, four times out of 10, a cognitively superior team would win. And the other two would just be, you know, would just be a toss up. Okay. Interesting. All right. So Jeff, we are here now in 2018 discussing what we think,

or what I think is incredible in terms of cognitive skill development through VR. Where are you going to be working, not physically, but in terms of the tech, five years' time? Where is this headed? Yeah, I think it's a great question that we talk about all the time. Our evolution as a company and our product basically said we had to allow professionals and professional teams the ability to see the game from any perspective and then I very quickly migrated to well if the players and staff can see the game from any perspective why can't a fan see the game and experience a game from any perspective so we work with broadcasters now.

Fox Sports is one of our big clients in Holland. So they're delivering our vantage points and our views to linear broadcast audiences now. Twice on every game day weekend, they use our tech within their analytics and their color commentating during games, halftime games, post games to, you know, to give, you know, the more casual fan this same type of experience. So that's one thing where it's going. The second area is directly to consumers. obviously be a huge market for consumers who want to consume this type of content, want to create their own content, want to see who they think like, want to put themselves in

the position of Messi or Ozil or Iniesta or whatever it may be. And those people who want to relive specific moments. So can I see the Philly special in the Super Bowl? Can I see it from Foles' perspective, the quarterback who turned into a receiver for probably one of the most iconic plays in Super Bowl history? Yes. Do I want to be Nick Foles?

Yes, I think I would. And I think a lot of people would like to relive things like that. So I feel there's all this kind of consumer-based immersive experiences that are going to come very quickly. Right now we can give insights to teams and coaches that just aren't available now. Opponents scouting. So imagine you can now scout by actually playing against them prior to the game. Yeah. That's huge. That's a huge advantage if you want to play against a left back and you're a seven or 11 um you know playing on the wing you know how how can you prepare well i can play against that actual

player or at least i could from a you know game perspective or game speed perspective play against uh an avatar that is or a situation that is that player so i think there's there's you know there's many return to play from injuries, you know, part of the physical rehabilitation process, keeping your cognitively, keeping yourself fit, which people, you know, maybe up to now haven't discounted. There's a huge, Gary, you would know as well,

there's a huge difference between, you know, physically rehabilitating yourself and mentally being game. Oh, yes, without a doubt. Without a doubt. I'm just sitting here getting chills because I'm thinking, if I'm 18, 16 years of age right now, I am so desperate for this tech. I am so desperate to find out what it's like to be where I've always thought

I want to be. That's an international Premier League player playing in La Liga, Bundesliga, whatever it is and you can actually give that to me i can bring myself to a higher level of performance how long well each individual is different but it's amazing what you've just done i'm just thinking now how soon before fans can be almost live the players that you've just discussed and be in a virtual world watching it that's got to be the ultimate to to take a fan in the armchair watching a game and yes i'm a quarterback

i'm hitting home runs i'm slam dunking i'm scoring goals wow i'm just saying that's that's actually gary that's actually not so far off yeah you. We do that right now. Our technology is real time. So we're actually, our latency for all the tech folks listening, our latency is 0.014 seconds. XYZ coordinate data, which is obviously quicker into our system than any linear broadcast video that's going over the airwaves. So we can do that. You can theoretically be in the head of a player

pretty close to live. Wow. That's pretty wild, man. How long before Chuck and I get these things? Next week. Say next week. Let's go wild, man. It's pretty wild. How long before Chuck and I get these things? Next week. Say next week. Hey. Say next week.

Let's go with next week. Let's go with next week. Next week is fine. Okay, there we go. All right. Feels done. Fantastic. Yeah.

Jeff, what a pleasure. Thank you. So cool to talk to you, man. You bumped my eyes, and I know Chuck's got a thrill out of this. I think our listeners are going to love it as well. We wish you, Beyond Sports, and everybody the very best of luck, and we are going to be glued to the World Cup in Russia, that's for sure. Well, thank you for having us.

And, you know, of course, if Germany wins, it will be all because of Beyond Sports. And there you go. We like that. That's a man who knows how to market. Thank you to Jeff Saunders, CEO of Beyond Sports. We are going to take a break when we come back professor eric goff gives us the physics behind this year's official world cup ball the adidas telstar 18 and if you've heard of telstar before a bit of a space link to that we'll explain

when we get back welcome back i'm gary o'reilly and i'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Gary O'Reilly. And this is still Chuck Nice. And this is still Play With Science. Yes, it is. Hope you're with us and not too confused. Right, joining us now, we're talking soccer. And to do that, we have Professor Eric Goff, the author of Gold Medal Physics and Press for Physics at Lynchburg

College in Virginia. Okay, what is on the horizon, Professor, as regards the new Telstar 18 for the World Cup, the official ball? So we had the Brazuca ball, which was this nice colorful ball here back in 2014 in Brazil. Yeah. And now in Russia, we're going to be using the Telstar 18 ball, both of which are made by Adidas. And you can tell the Telstar has a black and white color scheme. It honors the 1970 ball that was the first Adidas ball. It was also called a telstar and the black and white back then of course helped people see the ball better on the television screens when not

everybody had a color color screen so interesting pay homage to the past a little bit with this color scheme and that's where the uh the similarities end apart from the fact it's round yeah oh yes because the original Telstar 32 panels hand-stitched leather if I'm not mistaken that's right the traditional ball of course has the 32 panels you got the 20 hexagons and the 32 or sorry the 12 pentagons right you got 32 panels this thing only has six panels on it so we're getting the panel number down to an extremely low number to approaching a really uh perfect sphere so can you tell us what why these panels and why this because when you're looking at something with 32 panels to make up a round ball

you're going through an awful lot to get to a sphere so you know it's the technology wasn't available in 70 and i think there was the professor might back this up traditionally balls came with sort of pentagonal and hexagonal shapes okay and an awful lot of stitching and all for that now we have technology when you can thermally seal a ball and make it that's right yeah these seams are now thermally bonded on the ball so there's no stitching at all no they're not hand stitched like they used to be and if you think about how difficult it is to make a sphere uh out of you know materials cloth leather whatever it is, it's a challenge. And the old 32-panel design was a pretty good design for a sphere. That's our Epcot center, the Bucky balls, that carbon-60 atom.

The spherical balls that we had in the past, that was a very good design. But these very strange panels that we've got now, these circuitous shapes for the panels, help us get down the panel number all the way to six. So now why panels at all? There are plenty of balls that you look at a basketball. I mean, that has panels too, and even baseballs have panels, but that's for construction. So since you now have thermal sealing, why have any panels at all? Well, you've got a bladder inside of this ball, and you've got to be able to get the bladder inside of this, and you've got to be able to ensure that the ball stays round, a spherical shape during play.

So when it's being kicked and headed and rolling around on the pitch, it has to maintain a pretty spherical shape during play. It's very challenging to do that without any seams. It certainly needs an opening to get the air into the ball. Right. So for instance, if I had two semicircle hemispheres, and I put the bladder inside, and then I just have one thermally bonded seal all the way around, why wouldn't I use something like that to have just a totally smooth ball? So the seams do provide a little bit of structure to the spherical shape. The type of ball you're describing is going to be like a cricket ball. You're going to have two hemispheres coming together. Really good cricket balls actually have an extra seam on them as well.

But the seams actually help provide that spherical shape a little bit better. Once you start denting a panel or something, there's no way for that to get pulled back out into the spherical shape. get pulled back out into the spherical shape the thing is we go back to jubilani south africa 2010 the ball was hated by the players um because whether or not the factor of games were being played at sea level and games were being played at a mile high altitude uh affecting all sorts of things but the design of the ball meant it it knuckleballed at uh lower speeds am i correct so the real problem with javolani is the so-called drag crisis that chuck loves oh you know i do girl oh yeah so that oh wait you meant like you meant like uh in physics the drag crisis okay because my drag crisis is completely different.

We all know that. It's still a crisis. Yes, it's a crisis because my drag crisis is like, now how am I supposed to perform in these hills when these, you know they are way too tight. And breeze. So the physics drag crisis that we're talking about is where the flow over the ball changes

as you increase the ball speed from what's called laminar flow to turbulent flow. And the problem with Javalani is that crisis where that transition happens was right in the middle of the speed range where you saw a lot of free kicks and corner kicks. The great design of the Brazuca ball four years later is that they move that drag crisis back to a lower speed so that essentially all of the kicks that took place at the corner kicks and the free kick speed range were in this turbulent speed range. So you did not have this transition taking place during the middle of a kick. It looked like a beach ball sometimes being kicked. Oh yeah, it was horrible. However, the Brazuca has now found itself in another

iteration called Telstar 18. We've changed the shape of the panels as we highlighted. That then must mean something to the aerodynamics. All I know is it seems very much as if fifa the the world governing body have decided that they don't like the goalkeepers and they like scoreless draws

scoreless games even less so they're doing their best to make life difficult for the goalkeepers and the best goalkeepers in the world like david de gea and to Stegen from Germany have come out and said, we don't like Telstar 18. Are they being overly sensitive or do they actually have a point? Well, I think every time the World Cup rolls around and the new ball is out, keep in mind, this is $160. You know, it's a hundred pounds in Great Britain. This is not a cheap ball. And it makes Adidas an enormous amount of money by selling these balls. They fly off the shelves every time the World Cup comes out. So there's certainly a marketing desire for having a new ball every time. And every time the new balls come out, the players have to adjust and they have to get used to something new.

So there's always going to be a little bit of squabbling i don't think they're going to find the telstar ball anywhere near as bad as the javolani was eight years ago but it's got a different the the panels are a different shape the same number in six but there's a raised stippling a raised pattern on the surface of the ball that is different to the brazuca how on earth is that going to make any sort of difference so the total seam length on this brazuca if i take the 2014 ball and i actually measure the entire seam length all the way around it's about three and a third meters if i do the same thing with the telstar 18 it's four and a third meters. It's a whole extra meter, more than three feet long of seam. So to make up for that added roughness of the ball, what they had to do was

they made the actual seam height and the seam width on the Telstar a little bit narrower, a little bit shallower, and they actually made the texturing a little less tall than on the brazuca ball so they compensated for the added seam length by having these crazier looking panels by having slightly less roughened surface and you get about the same aerodynamic effects by doing that they offset each other so how do these balls compare to movement in flight to the original telstar which is like what people really when you think of a soccer ball yeah that's what you think a guy too iconic yeah that's your that is the one when you say soccer or football like that's the ball that comes into your mind so how would these balls perform different? I can't believe I just said that. How would they

focus? Get your game head on. I'm sorry. You're having another drag crisis. I'm having a total drag crisis right now. Sorry, professor. Anyway, we have an errant pupil. How would these balls perform differently? One to the next. So if you look back to the stitched balls of the past, they did not maintain their spherical shape as well. They didn't perform as well when there would be some wetness on the pitch. Some weathering of the ball would be a lot faster. These thermally bonded balls, the technology is now such that they can maintain their spherical shape better. They keep the water out better. They're going to be much more up to the high standards you would expect for a soccer ball for much longer during the game.

Do you think the new design for Telstar 18 is going to affect the style of football we see played by the teams in the World Cup? the Jubilani certainly did because it was flying around so you you weren't getting the longer passes players who were hitting power shots in a game found that once it left their boot they had basically no control over what would happen the goalkeepers could might as well sit in the stand because they didn't know which way it was going either oh well look how well Spain did with their short passing and that excellent passing game. I mean, that's what they were able to do with that Javali ball. Will Telstar 18 have a similar effect or will it be more egalitarian for all styles of football? So my colleagues in Japan have done some wind tunnel studies of these, and I've done some

trajectory analysis with that wind tunnel work here at Lynchburg College, and what I found was the Telstar ball for a really hard hit ball is going to travel about eight to nine percent less distance than the Brazuca ball, so there'll be a slight reduction in the long range kicks, and that's probably going to be noticed by the goalkeepers who are really trying to hit the ball down the pitch at great distance. Maybe for a really long free kick, they might notice a slight reduction in the overall distance. Let me ask you when it comes to gambling, because it's a big deal for the World Cup.

A lot of money is being bet on these games. And it's over a long period. And it's over a very long period of time. So is this information made available? Or have you ever thought about selling this information? Because like, that's where I'm really going with this. Like, we could really get this information out there to degenerate gamblers. It's very important. We're monetizing the good professors. I'm just saying, your work is worth something, professor. Your work is really worth something. We can get this information out there because this ball design is going to be good for some teams and going to be really bad for others, depending on your style of play. Isn't that true? So the paper we've got published is going to be online very, very soon. And I'm happy to provide a copy to anyone who's interested. Yeah, I've already read the paper and you're telling me we're giving this stuff away for free?

Doc, is that what you're telling me? It will be online at the Journal of Sports Engineering and Technology very soon. Are you even an American, sir? Are you even an American? You are giving your work away for nothing? That's called science, my friend. And we like it, and the world's a better place for it. All right.

Well, let's not get too heavily into your paper because we want to take a break. And we will come back and we will go into depth about your findings with Telstar 18. But who knew you could get that much data off of a ball in a wind tunnel? You guys are insane. You know that, right? Like, there's something wrong with you. No, they're scientists. And if you put those sort of things in front of a scientist,

they're going to be very, very analytical. Professor, please don't get angry. We'll take a break. More in-depth and less drag crisis when we get back. Our good friend professor eric welcome back i'm gary o'reilly and i'm chuck nice and this is playing with science and chuck's uh just nipped out uh got the polish for his tiara yes i did and uh we're changing the color of the heels and uh we're out of my drag crisis we are hopefully coming out of that stage of Chuck's life.

You said coming out. Well, yes, I am, Chuck. Loud and proud. OK, we still haven't really overhumped come that speed hump, have we? Right. Just published a new paper. Let's focus, shall we? This is what the good professor, Professor Eric Goff, our very good friend, has done. And it is about Telstar 18, the official World Cup ball for Russia 2018.

So as we said, we've got a bit of heritage back to 1970 in Mexico in the sense that it's black and it's white. But that's just about it. That's where it ends, right? Yeah. So, Professor, I read in the paper that you sent the ball to japan uh one why two what kind of wind tunnel can you actually test a soccer ball in and let me just say for those who are listening i'm sorry because i jumped ahead the professor sent the ball to japan to be tested in a wind tunnel they may have had balls already there and they probably did just fly. He didn't just fly it out. Maybe he didn't fly the ball over.

Maybe he just told them, go down to your Japanese Walmart, pick up a Telstar 18, okay, and throw it into your wind tunnel. But what I really want to know, because I've seen wind tunnels, and they're cavernous, number one, for the most part.

They're used for aeronautics and for cars. And then you've got cars and all sorts of things. But what kind of wind tunnel can you actually effectively test a soccer ball in, professor? So the beauty of being a scientist is that the one characteristic you need to be good at is you have to be like a child. You have to have things to play with. And when you get something like a brand new World Cup ball, you've got all kinds of ideas

racing through your head about how you want to test this thing. So my colleagues in Japan will take the Telstar ball, and you have to destroy it. You have to open up the back part of this, attach a rod in it, and then you blow air from the wind tunnel over the ball at various speeds. What we're looking at is we change the speed of this from a very low air speed to a very high air speed on the ball is we're trying to figure out what kind of drag it feels, if it feels any sideways forces that are going to lead to knuckling effects. And there are certainly some knuckling effects that you're going to get out of these balls when they're not spinning.

To make a ball, once it's kicked, not rotate, you're going to have to put an awful lot of force directly through it so as it travels almost as a still object. That's right. So if you kick it right through the center, that's going to lead to very little spin. If you move your boot off to the side off center,

then you're going to get the ball to start spinning more. So if I am beginning to strike the ball on either side, I will naturally give it some rotation. And you're saying once I do that as a player, there is a greater capacity for it to knuckle in flight? No, I'm saying it will knuckle when there's very little spin. So even when there's no spin at all, you can still get some sideways movement of the ball because the air comes off the ball slightly asymmetrically. And can we remind our listeners, maybe they didn't hear our other show

about the soccer balls that we've done, when you talk about spin, can you give us the breakdown of what spin is doing to a ball as it moves through the air from over a distance? Sure. So as the ball is spinning, so if it's spinning, if I look down on it, it's spinning counterclockwise and it's moving away from me. I'm going to see the left side of the ball whipping air back a little farther than on the right side of the ball. It's analogous to looking in the back of a boat at a rudder, and you go to turn the rudder, and you see the wake of the water turning sideways. Well, if the boat pushes the water in one direction, Newton's third law says the water's got to push the boat in the other direction. It's the same thing with the air. If the air comes off the back of the ball in one direction, the air's got to be pushing the ball

in the other direction. So if I look down at a counterclockwise spinning ball, it's going to want to go from right to left when I'm looking down on it moving away from me. Okay, so now with my players head on, and you've just given me that information about when I'm curling the ball or when I'm hitting it with so much power it doesn't rotate if I'm hitting it with power I am now in a sort of free kick situation maybe 20-25 yards from goal where I am looking not to bend it around the wall or over the wall but I am looking to basically blast a hole in the back of the net. The sort of thing Cristiano Ronaldo does, and they have the way of striking the ball with the aperture directly onto it. So as it then deforms the shape of the ball, will we see even more effect? Because that's going to be something that excites the viewers. That's going to be

something that gives goalkeepers a fantastically big problem. Yeah. So if you're really kicking for speed and your, your boots going mostly through the center of the ball, you're going to get very little rotation, but the surface is not completely symmetric. You're going to get that boundary layer of air separating in the back of the ball, slightly asymmetrically, and you can cause the ball to start wobbling a little bit through the air. And yeah, the goalkeepers are not going to enjoy that. So that wobble, it literally is a knuckleball at that point. Like in baseball, what you call a knuckleball, that's the kind of movement that you're going to get, that kind of back and forth,

you don't know where it's going type of movement. And just like a baseball, a good knuckleball that's thrown in baseball, you want to have a good half a rotation or so on the way to the plate so that you can get certain seams and certain smooth areas exposed to the air alternating. And that's what causes the ball and a knuckleball to wiggle. Same thing with the soccer ball. You get a slight rotation of the ball ball and you can change that asymmetry where the ball's air is coming off and that'll cause it to wobble a little bit. Did your findings produce anything else? Because I'm just thinking about the mentality of basically every football player. How can I use this to my advantage and win? How can I score goals? How can I make something happen that

is advantageous to me as an individual, to us as a team? Did you come up with any other findings you think may have some effect on play or an individual with free kicks? Corners is another one you mentioned. So we've tested balls from the speed range of about 16 miles per hour to about 78 miles an hour. And we've got the whole host of data for the aerodynamic coefficients for these balls. And what I had mentioned before is if you look at the high-speed kicks, the Telstar is going to go a little less far compared to Brazuca for these really long kicks. going to go a little less far compared to bazooka for these really long kicks. You can certainly get some orientations of the ball where you get a little bit more sideways movement than some other orientations. It's just, the challenge in a wind tunnel when you break the ball is that you can

only study one orientation at a time. So we certainly don't have a whole, you know, series of orientations for the ball in the wind tunnel. It just takes too many balls to do that. Here's a thought for you. Does the ball contain a microchip of any kind? I have heard that you can put, I believe Telstar 18, you can do that. You can have a ball inside of it and you can actually use a GPS tracker to figure out where the ball is. Because we've encountered this with Wilson, the guys who make the American footballs, and they have that GPS tracking and therefore you can get telemetrics.

I'm just wondering if that technology is inside Telstar 18, who's going to be getting access to it? FIFA or the countries that are playing? I don't know. It's very difficult to get the technology information from Adidas because, of course, their information is proprietary. And they don't want the world to know. Well, there's your answer. I think you just answered the question. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, Adidas is the one that's going to end up with all the information. Anybody with a conspiracy theory mind will tell you now that if there's technology inside the ball, someone's going to be trying to find a way. To hack it. Yeah.

You got to. Are you kidding me? And you know who's going to do that? Tom Brady. Come on. Come on. You've do that? Tom Brady. Come on. Come on. You've changed sports and blamed Brady. I think the little GPS is going to start deflating the soccer ball.

Oh, okay. So deflation, direction. Oh, dear. Come on. If there's tech in there, someone's going to be thinking, I want to hack this. It's a challenge. Someone somewhere is thinking, I'm up for this challenge. Even if they don't need the information, somebody's going to be thinking, I want to hack this. Yeah, I've got to hack that stuff. It's a challenge. Someone somewhere is thinking, I'm up for this challenge. Even if they don't need the information, somebody's going to hack it just for the hell of it. You know that.

Isn't that right? Yeah. Hey, why change the ball at all? What the hell is happening that they do this every... Why? Well, I think the professor touched on the fact that... Thank you. Really? Really big money. How many balls are manufactured a year? As a question, I've just thought that and thinking you may not know, but do you have an idea, rough ballpark figure?

You've got to think you've got a billion people watching the World Cup or that are certainly interested in it. Even if you take it down to a percentage, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of these balls that are going to be flying off the shelves at $160 a pop. Hey, listen, it makes sense to me. I mean, you know, the NFL received a little flack as teams. There was a point where all the teams were changing their uniforms. Yeah.

And then they figured out, oh, they're not updating their uniforms. They're creating sales at, you know, sporting goods stores. That oh, they're not updating their uniforms. They're creating sales at local sporting goods stores. That's all they're doing. They're increasing their merchandising. Soccer teams have done this for years. I mean, some soccer teams will have three different uniforms. Wow. They'll have one of which they play in their home venue.

And if they play away from home, there will be another one. But that second change of uniform might clash. So they have a third. And guess what? People buy them. I'm sure they will. Each season it will be different. So you have one home that's your home colors

and then you have two away uniforms just in case your team's colors clash with the other team's colors. Wow. Or it's just a cynical marketing ploy to make money. Now, you know I can't hate on a costume change. No, no, you can't. Let it go.

So, Professor, do we have any synergy between the ball being manufactured as it is and then a range of footwear that comes out that might be more inclined to get the best out of the ball or are we going too far into a rabbit hole with this? Yeah. I think the main choice that the players are using with their, their boot is going to be the playing surface. I mean, they're going to want to know how much grip they're going to want to need.

I mean, most of the time they're running on the surface as opposed to actually having contact with the ball. I mean, when you get these stats about running, you know, 10 kilometers during a game or something, I mean, the percentage of the time they're actually in contact with the ball is pretty small. So I think the interaction with the turf and the pitch is the most important. No, I just wondered when, I mean, Adidas make footwear as well as they do make other sorts of things. But I know the Predator range was always driven for manufacture to impart power, but more accuracy through the ball.

So I just wondered if there was this sort of connected thought process that new ball, new boots, but the boots will be more beneficial used with this ball. If you use that ball, that's a good idea, actually. And guess what? Now that you've said it, they'll probably do that. They've probably done that. It's another moneymaker. I don't feel so.

Let me ask you this. One, do they talk to the players? Do they ever consult the players before they do a ball change? And two, why do they not change the size of the balls is that just like no that's standardized yeah it's standardized but it's size so i'm just saying like if you're if you're changing the panels and all that kind of stuff why not make it bigger or smaller and what would that do to if you made the ball bigger or smaller so if you make the ball bigger then the the larger area of the ball would lead to more air resistance on it.

If you make it smaller, then of course you'd have even smaller air resistance. The ball is just under a pound in weight, and the size of the ball is fairly standard. I mean, if you made a change like the actual size of the ball, that would drastically alter the game that's played right now. Gotcha. I mean, subtle aerodynamic differences are one thing for players to get used to. But if you change the weight and size of the ball, I mean, hand a softball to a baseball player and say, here, use this. It's just completely different.

And they tell you, I play a real sport. I'm sorry. Yeah. real sport. I'm sorry. Yeah. If you made a soccer ball, a football larger, then you would have to acquire a new set of skills to be able to work with it. Because the way you kick it, the way you control and run with it, you would have to readjust. You would have to adapt to that. I'd like to revisit that bit where you said about weight. How much lighter is Telstar 18 to the original Telstar, if you know? Oh, they're very close in weight. The modern balls tend to be just a tiny bit heavier than the current balls right now. I mean, I think this is about 0.95 pounds. The older balls tend

to be just very slightly less. How interesting. There's not a great deal of difference in the weight, although we've got every technical innovation in the new ball, yet the weight is the same. What happens if we made it lighter? Does it just become a smaller beach ball? That's right. I mean, the drag force that acts on it does not have anything to do with the ball's weight, but, of course, the acceleration does.

So if you made the ball lighter, then it's going to have more acceleration and you are going to get more of that beach ball type effect. So do they ever talk to the players about any of that? I mean, these seem to be that all of these things really affect the game, primarily the players. Do they ever consult them or is that not necessary? Professor, you have a thought on that

because I know I have one, but I'd like to hear yours first, please. I don't know that Adidas especially discusses the actual World Cup design of the ball with the players. I mean, the idea is you can change the panel design and you can change the way in which the seams are oriented or the texturing. But at the end of the day, you want the ball to behave aerodynamically very much like what they're used to, which is why Javalani was a problem. So, you know, you could roll this thing out ahead of time, and of course they're going to be able to play with it before they get to the World Cup. But you roll this thing out and you get the opinion of the players,

and you're always going to get some squawking. But, I mean, as long as it behaves aerodynamically like what they're used to, they just have to get used to a slightly different feel from the texturing and all that. But, you know, I don't know that they consult with the players too much. I'm with the professor. I don't think there's a great deal of conversation when it comes to the ball. In the end, it's the same for both that's going to say everybody's playing it's not a variable there's no advantage for anybody no there's so it's not as if one team

is playing with a different ball to the other it's the same ball all the time when it comes to footwear the players have far more say in terms of design what's good how they feel what they want where they see it and that then sort of and crushes a lot of sports, particularly with the big brands. But when it comes to the ball, I think it's basically, this is the ball you'll be playing with, deal with it. Oh man, that would be so cool then. You have a World Cup where, surprise ball, no team knows what ball they're going to be using for that particular game. Oh, that's a different

spot. I'm telling you, that would be awesome. Now I'm interested. That would be awesome. So the teams come out on the field and they're just like, oh, damn, Jubilani. Or the Jabstar 22. Yeah! You have no idea what ball you're going to be

using in the game. That would be amazing! That would be amazing! That would be amazing. If you were the head of FIFA, you would probably become the most hated man, not just on the planet, ever. Ever. I want that job. I thought their previous head of FIFA

was already the most hated man on the planet. I think Chuck would surpass him if he were able to introduce that kind of legislation with the board. Oh, my God. Nothing would make me happier. Right. And on that note, I have to say thank you, Professor. It's been fabulous to explore your findings with Telstar 18, the official World Cup football for Russia 2018. And yeah, thank you to Jeff Saunders. Jeff Saunders, what a great time.

Beyond Sports, what they're doing has really raised the bar they're headed to the infinity and beyond oh god that was awful that was just terrible but at least Chuck's happy I've been Gary O'Reilly

and I've been ashamed of myself I'm Chuck Nice and this has been Playing With Science and we love Chuck and we will love you and we'll see you all soon thank you to our guests it's been a pleasure