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Rabat – Something strange keeps happening at this World Cup. A striker lets fly from distance, a goalkeeper dives the right way, gets a hand to it, and it goes in anyway. It’s happened enough times now, to enough world-class shot-stoppers, that people are starting to ask whether the ball itself might be part of the problem.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup has already broken the record for most goals in a single tournament, surpassing the previous mark of 172 set at Qatar 2022, and the group stage isn’t even finished.Â
More games naturally mean more goals in an expanded 48-team tournament, but the record fell in just the 59th match while Qatar needed all 64. The numbers alone don’t explain it.Â
Former England goalkeeper Joe Hart has been the most vocal critic, raising concerns on the BBC after spotting the same pattern repeating across multiple matches: a driven, rising shot with little spin, at shoulder height, and the same kind of error. Jordan Pickford against Croatia, Édouard Mendy and Luca Zidane in their nations’ openers, all caught out in eerily similar fashion.
His diagnosis isn’t about swerve or dip. It’s about pace. “The ball is coming into the keepers a lot faster than it feels when it comes off the foot,” he said.Â
Fellow former England goalkeeper Paul Robinson has echoed the concern, adding that North America’s varied altitudes may be making things even harder to predict.
There’s science behind it. Researchers in South Korea and Japan published a paper on the Trionda finding that its seam and groove layout can trigger a “drag crisis” effect at certain speeds, meaning the ball doesn’t decelerate the way a goalkeeper’s instincts expect. That fraction of a second is enough to throw off the timing that elite keepers have spent careers developing.
The Trionda is built from just four thermally bonded panels, the fewest ever on a World Cup ball, and Adidas insists it went through more than 300 lab tests for flight stability. It’s not the Jabulani; it doesn’t wobble erratically through the air. Its quirk is subtler, which in some ways makes it harder to solve.
Hart believes goalkeepers will adapt as the tournament goes on. They usually do. But until that clicks, strikers might be wise to keep shooting, because right now, the odds are tilted in their favor.
