Thaindian News

Cape Town, June 7(ANI): US reserve goalkeeper Marcus Hahnemann believes that the World Cup ball, Jabulani, will lead to a number of freak goals during the tournament in South Africa.

“There will be goals scored from 45 yards at this World Cup. They will be called great goals but they won’t be great goals, it’s just the ball,” The Mirror quoted Hahnemann, as saying.

Meanwhile, regular keeper Tim Howard, who played in Saturday’s friendly against Australia, admits that he needs all his handling skills to deal with the ball.”We will have to improve in a lot of areas. When you see how the ball is, you’ll find a lot of teams struggle. The majority of the problems in our warm-up game were due to the flight of the ball,” Howard said.

“It puts defenders under pressure. We’re going to have to do some work this week so that we can judge the ball better, but I play basketball!” he added.

The new ball has already come under criticism from England manager Fabio Capello, goalkeeper David James, France goalkeeper Hugo Lloris and Spain stopper Iker Casillas, who branded it “a beach ball”.

The Jabulani, which means ‘to celebrate’ in Zulu, has a band of 11 colours representing 11 players in a team and the 11 South African tribes.

The ball for the final, the Jo’bulani, will have a gold band.

It is made of natural latex and woven fabric, with eight foam rubber panels - Adidas’s 2006 World Cup ball, the Teamgeist, had 14. (ANI)