A Day in Paradise

FIFA boots chip ball from 2006 soccer World Cup

The ball will also not be used in the FIFA Club World Championship games in Tokyo this December, the association said Monday in a joint statement with German sportswear manufacturer Adidas-Salomon AG, which will supply the official game balls at both tournaments.

“The technology isn’t perfect yet,” said Adidas spokesman Jan Runau. “We’re still working on it. We have to be 1000 percent certain that it works perfectly before we can deploy it in professional soccer games.”

Engineers working on the smart ball had hoped the technology would be ready for the World Cup tournament next year.

In October, Günter Rohmer, director of performance-optimized systems at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in Erlangen, Germany, said the technology had been tested at the main soccer stadium in Nuremberg for several months and more recently in an under-17 FIFA tournament in Peru. “The technology has performed well, and we’re pretty optimistic that it will be used at the games in Germany next year,” Rohmer said at the time.

In their joint statement, FIFA and Adidas said they decided to “focus on the further development and testing of the system before using it at tournaments on the highest profession level.”

Runau declined to say when the smart ball will be ready for professional use.