I mean this quite literally.  I heard recently one of the top youth coaches from SSI Arsenal ask this very question: 'What is the single most important piece of the equipment for playing football?'.  He received all types of the commonest answers to the query.  One young fellow shouted out, 'The shoes, sir!'.  Another timidly answered' 'Shinguards...?'.  And one answered, 'The players!'.  Now, while all of those are important answers, the players aren't actually a part of the equipment.  So, what is the answer?  Without any further reading, can you guess what is, indeed, the single most important and most neglected piece of equipment in the game of football?
 

Well, the answer is so obvious once you hear it that it makes it the easiest answer to overlook.  Actually, the ball, sir, is the most important single piece of the equipment first and foremost and without argument.  And the game is called 'football', after all.  Nothing can disturb or ruin a game faster than an improperly inflated or the introduction of an inferior ball.  In fact, a game cannot even begin properly without a proper football.  From the warm-up itself the match can be predicted.  But proper footballs are expensive.  And not all of us have the connections like SSI Arsenal to actually develop  their own ball  for training and  youth matches.  So most times our only option is to go to a

The Puma v1.08

sports store and search for a good quality football. 

But how do we know when we have picked the best one?  Some believe that the most expensive is the best one. Nike and Adidas corporate heads would love for you to believe that idea since they charge over a hundred dollars per ball (real cost for production being under $10 dollars when produced in mass quantity).  The mark-up being attributed to distribution costs, import and taxation fees.  So fair enough.  A good ball is expensive.  But which is actually the best ball and for what reasons?  Well, it is a very complicated matter that only very experienced players are able to deciper.  But, it works like this:  Test balls are distributed to select groups and teams and then feedback is exacted and decisions are made.  And you would not believe how easy it is to influence the top boys into accepting one type over another.  While there is some science behind the production it is much less than you might think.

In another life, Alan Hinton, Grant Gibbs, and I ran a team called the Seattle Sounders pre MLS days. And naturally Nike was our sponsor since we are in the backyard of Nike Town, Portland, Oregon. We were the test ground for the Nike balls. First, materials are selected and the balls were produced in Pakistan and supposedly given all types of bounce tests, compression tests, etc. Then they were shipped to us to use in training and games. Every 3 or 4 weeks we would report back on the condition of the ball under different weather conditions and age wear. Then if I liked that particular test ball, I would call them on the phone and rave about it. And that would become the production ball for that season. Simple as that. Funny, huh? Now since we know that that is the system, it seems obvious again yet that is how it works. So you see the balls themselves are simply picked because somebody has influence with the decision makers. And this leaves the system open to error, prejudice, and special interest.

For example, Adidas sees profit in the mass production of their Euro ball. But they didn’t get very good reviews from the pre-tests. Yet the profit is enormous so they go ahead anyway (despite poor reviews) and get the ball introduced into the Euros and the World Cup. Everybody assumes that it is the world's best ball because it is at the World Cup. Yet the players disliked it. It is a heavy, maximum sized, and a slow football without any 'life' to it. And as we all know, they already had developed the best ball in history called the Tango but they were not wise enough to recognize the fact that they had already secured the perfect ball which was over 30 years ago!

And this is the reason that the JiFL accepts no less than the world's first intelligent football. The Puma v1.08. Click the link and read all about it: footy-boots.com.  Now we have a league standard, the matches are already improved because of it, and we all benefit with the use of the best ball since Tango was invented.

* The author of this piece must remain anonymous and incognito due to death threats from the transnational conglomerates at Nike and Adidas.  He will remain in hiding until further notice.