One Year after FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022/ Technology in Al Rihla, Al Hilm Balls Enhanced Success of World Cup
Doha, November 23 (QNA) - The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 used two official balls during the tournament matches. The first was Al Rihla ball, which was used from the group stage until the quarter-finals, and the second was Al Hilm (Dream) ball, which was used during the matches of the semi-finals and the final.
The State of Qatar was keen to provide distinctive innovations and modern technology to enhance the success of the Qatari edition, the first to be held in the Middle East and the region, with innovative technologies that increase the modernity of football and keep pace with developments in modern technology. Among the new technologies used were balls with innovative technologies, keeping pace with the technological progress occurred in sports competitions to help referees and monitor every detail during matches in order to achieve justice and prevent any feeling of injustice that may creep into the souls of players and football fans.
The great development in the official balls used in every World Cup tournament has become a renewed tradition with each edition, and depends on an official protocol, which allows each ball to have a specific design and a special symbolism to link the World Cup to the host country.
FIFA described Al Rihla ball as stunning, sustainable and high-quality and said that its name inspired by Qatars culture, architecture, iconic boats and flag.
Al Rihla is the 14th official World Cup ball and features CRT-CORE - the heart of the ball, providing speed, accuracy and consistency for fast-paced action and precision, with maximal shape and air retention, as well as rebound accuracy; and SPEEDSHELL - a textured PU skin with a new 20-piece panel shape, improving the accuracy, flight stability and swerve thanks to macro- and microtextures, plus surface debossing.
The sensor is powered by a rechargeable battery, which can be charged by induction. It enables the Video Match Officials to review live data for the first time by automatically providing very accurate information, 500 times per second, on when a player has touched the ball.
Japanese researchers tested the last four World Cup balls in a wind tunnel at Tsukuba University in Japan, and found that Al Rihla ball has aerodynamic properties very similar to its predecessors, and moves slightly faster than the previous balls.
Designed with sustainability as a priority, the outer membrane is made of polyurethane leather, which improves accuracy and stability when flying and drifting, and its internal design provides speed and consistency of fast movement, with maximum air retention and rebound accuracy.
60 matches were played with the Al Rihla ball, with which the tournament matches began, starting from the group stage and ending with the quarter-finals. Beginning with the semi-finals, it was switched to relying on Al Hilm ball. The matches of France against Morocco and Argentina against Croatia in the semi-finals along with the match between Morocco and Croatia to determine third and fourth places and the final match between France and Argentina were played with the Al Hilm ball.
The Al Hilm ball replaced Al Rihla ball in the final stage of the World Cup matches, and it used the same technology based on connected ball system, a technology that has proven to be amazingly successful in identifying offside cases more quickly and accurately, as it relies on player position data to provide video assistant referees (VAR) with accurate information that enables them to make optimal decisions.
Argentine star Lionel Messi and French star Kylian Mbappe were the most prominent players who scored goals with the Al Rihla and Al Hilm balls, as Messi scored four goals with Al Rihla, including a goal against Saudi Arabia in the first round, a goal against Mexico in the second round, a goal against Australia in the round of sixteen, and a goal against the Netherlands in the quarter-finals. He scored three goals with Dream ball, one against Croatia in the semi-finals and two goals against France in the final match, in addition to scoring a goal from a penalty shootout that allowed the Argentine team to win the title.
French star Kylian Mbappe also succeeded in scoring goals with both balls and was crowned with the Golden Shoe award as the tournament's top scorer with 8 goals, the highest score any player has achieved in a single edition, since the 2022 World Cup in South Korea and Japan, during which Brazilian Ronaldo scored 8 goals. Mbappe is the second player in history to score three goals (hat-tricks) in the final after Englishman Geoff Hurst, who scored the same number of goals in the final of England and Germany in 1966.
The two balls, Al Rihla and Al Hilm, are the two most prominent balls in recent times as the World Cup ball remains the official ball for FIFA competitions until the next edition of the World Cup, and matches held in various leagues are played with them.
The first stage of the World Cup witnessed a distinguished appearance by the attackers, and the goalkeepers did not make any comment about the ball and the goalkeepers' suffering in dealing with it, especially in the aspect of stopping the various shots fired by the players, whether from long distances or from inside the penalty area. The world watched wonderful saves by goalkeepers on the path to the World Cup, the most prominent of these saves was by Argentine goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez, who repelled a French attack in the last minutes of the final match. (QNA)
