A partial defence of Mikel Arteta's balls

We all know what modern Premier League managers are like for excuse-making, but there could be something in this one, though that raises questions of its own too.

Unusual though it may feel as a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur, and for all the slightly lame excuses for his team’s defeats over the years, I do feel a need this morning to go out to (partially) bat for Mikel Arteta over his comments regarding the match balls being used for the EFL Cup semi-final matches played this week.

To be clear, I haven’t handled these balls in any way—as an aside, if you think I’m going to shy away from such references, you clearly don’t know me well enough—but one thing that I do know for certain is that there can be quite big differences in the weight and feel of a match-quality football, according to the individual manufacturer and the type being used.

In the mid-1990s, it was all about Mitre. They made the official match ball of the Premier League, and smaller, more modest teams the length and breadth of the country could get a brief scintilla of what it must feel like to play at that exalted level by looking down and seeing an Ultimax at their own feet.

But this wasn’t universal. There was no official match ball of the nation’s Saturday and Sunday leagues. And this meant that we all got to sample footballs made by the various manufacturers of the time. Most notorious was the Mitre Multiplex (X link), which was particularly beloved by schools on account of their practically indestructible nature.

This came at an inevitable cost. Fully-inflated, they could have the consistency of a cannonball, with a solid whack just about anywhere about you leading to an extremely distinctive cold sting and accompanying red mark. There were, of course, many clubs who valued this durability above anything else, including the skin tone of their players’ thighs.

But choices could get more eccentric, depending on who was doing the buying. One of the teams that I played for had a Bundesliga match ball manufactured by Uhlsport (it looked something like this one) with similar cannonball-like qualities to the Multiplex, only in this case it got worse because it just kept on taking on weight but wouldn’t destruct in any other way.

Even by the—considerably laxer than now—standards of the time, we eventually decided that this situation couldn’t continue and somebody took a knife to it. We’d had it for about three years by that time, though it had been broadly retired much earlier for fear of what damage it might be wreaking those who had to head it regularly, which fortunately did not include me.

This is, of course, an extreme example, but more broadly I do understand the argument that a ball being used for one competition could feel very different to another. The match balls in the EFL Cup—just as per in the EFL generally—are made by Puma whereas those in the Premier League are made by Nike. Arteta told the press that: “It is just different, very different to the Premier League ball and you have to adapt to that because it flies differently. When you touch it, the grip is very different as well and you have to adapt.”

These balls are made in different locations, quite plausibly with materials from different sources. The panels may be different shapes, the ridges on them may be different shapes. Changing from one to another isn’t necessarily straightforward, especially if you’re using another type all the time.

And the laws of the game do quite specifically allow for differences between match balls being used. They have to have a circumference of between 68 cm (27 ins) and 70 cm (28 ins), so one ball can be an inch smaller than another. It has to weigh between 410 g (14 oz) and 450 g (16 oz) at the start of the match, so there’s allowance for a couple of ounces in weight. Even the amount of air inside them can vary. Pressure has to equal between 0.6 and 1.1 atmosphere. This is the biggest variable allowance of the three.

Furthermore, balls have definitely changed since I was a player. In about 2009 or so, we went to Middle Road to see Shoreham play Kingstonian in an FA Cup match. I’d had a drink or two, and during the second half we were standing along the side when the ball came sailing out of play at such an angle that I couldn’t resist volleying it straight back over the barrier and back towards the player who was running over to take the throw. It was a smoother move than anything I ever managed on the pitch as a player.

And there were three really immediate differences. First and most obvious was how light it was. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I guessed that it weighed a third of what that Uhlsport monstrosity from the 1990s did by the time it was finally put out of all our miseries. Secondly, I could have sworn it was a bit smaller than the balls that we used five to ten years earlier, though I am willing to concede that this could have been my imagination playing tricks on me.

And finally, it was… ridged. I noticeably didn’t feel the full surface of the ball on the inside of my right foot. So, yes, there are differences, and also it’s worth bearing in mind that even my example came a decade and a half ago and there may have been further changes in football technology (that aren’t little more than marketing guff) since then.

There have long been complaints about the standard of match balls used in different tournaments. Barely a World Cup goes by without some goalkeeper or coach complaining about some property of the tournament ball or other. Of course, the only question that matters is that of whether it meets the rules, and it can be different. A bigger ball at a higher air pressure may feel slightly lighter. A smaller one at a lower pressure may feel slightly heavier. The exact bounce may be different.

And this raises the smallest furrow of doubt over Arteta’s complaints. Arsenal had already played three games to get this far in the EFL Cup this season, and they’d scored eleven goals. They haven’t brought out a limited edition EFL Cup semi-final ball, so they’ll have used it without significant incident (unless we include going two down to Crystal Palace before coming back to win 3-2) in three previous matches before. What was the difference this time around?

If the complaint is that the ball was too light, did anyone try letting a tiny bit of air out to see if that made any difference? Did the Arsenal players train with it first? And it should be added that beyond the laws of the game as written, there are already STANDARDS. As the EFL pointed out in their rather testy response to Arteta’s comments:

As is required throughout the professional game, the PUMA ball used in this season's Carabao Cup and in EFL competition since 2021-22 is tested in accordance with the FIFA Quality Programme for Footballs and meets the FIFA Quality Pro standard.

So there.

Of course, this is all just part of the pantomime, really. By creating a kerfuffle about the match ball, Mikel Arteta is creating a dust cloud which obscures the plain, simple fact that his team had 23 shots on goal against Newcastle and failed to score any of them. Following on from a fairly lacklustre performance at Brighton last weekend, they’re showing signs of fatigue, and while their injury crisis has been nothing like Spurs by volume, they have been hit where it hurts. Martin Odegaard was a big loss earlier in the season, as is Bukayo Saka currently. Distraction techniques are far from uncommon these days, and if they are suffering fatigue from an over-stuffed schedule, they’re not the only ones.

There is, of course, a difference between an explanation and an excuse, and I’ll accept Arteta’s complaints as the former, but not as the latter. The bare fact of the matter is that Arsenal weren’t detrimented more than Newcastle were over this match. Granted, Newcastle had played a game more in the competition with it (including a penalty shootout), but beyond that they’re both Premier League clubs who usually use Nike balls.

Both would have both been able to get hold of Puma ones to train with beforehand to acclimatise had it been considered beforehand—it is not in the EFL or Puma’s best interests for such high-profile matches to involve shots regularly pinging off into orbit—and I’m not sold, considering those previous 11 goals scored with them, that they were the deciding factor this time around.

But balls can be bigger, and balls can be smaller. They can weigh a little more and they can weigh a little less. As a former player himself, Mikel Arteta will already be fully aware that they can vary slightly from match to match and certainly from tournament to tournament. And as he should also know, what really, ultimately matters is how you handle them under pressure, and Arsenal will have to be better at that in the second leg of this cup tie than they were in the first, if they want to proceed to Wembley in the EFL Cup this year.

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