2) The ball is the best
“We are the victims of Fifa and the ever-developing football,” the Egypt goalkeeper Essam El Hadary lamented on Monday. His manager, Héctor Cúper, appeared to find the comment amusing and it is, after all, a well-established rite of passage that shot-stoppers line up to take a pop at the ball. Igor Akinfeev is another to have had his say about the Telstar 18, but it is hard to see what they are complaining about because this summer’s edition seems the most reliable for some time. If the litmus test for a ball’s performance is the way it behaves on long-range shots and deliveries into the box then it has passed. Free-kicks from Aleksandr Golovin, Cristiano Ronaldo and Aleksandar Kolarov have left keepers helpless because the players were able to trust their technique rather than worry about the flight. A high number of goals from crossed set-pieces speaks partly of organisational issues but also comes down to the fact that this ball can reliably be placed on a sixpence. “The football might be more acceptable to the players than the goalkeepers,” El Hadary conceded, and perhaps that is the best indicator that all is, in fact, as it should be. Nick Ames
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/19/ten-things-weve-learned-from-the-first-round-of-world-cup-games