And believe me, goalkeepers can be quite amazingly stupid. Just listen to this exchange: Cervasio: These new balls, a lot of goalkeepers are complaining about them, they're lighter, they move around ... what do you think of them, Shep?

Shep Messing: I think it's absolutely ridiculous Tina -- why not make the goalkeepers play with one hand tied behind their backs, or take away their gloves ... the ball is livelier, it moves like a knuckle ball, it's a nightmare for goalkeepers. There followed two video clips: first, Columbus's Will Hesmer letting in a shot from the Red Bulls' Dave van den Bergh, to which Messing added the enlightening comment that Hesmer "has no idea where the ball is going"; second, the Red Bulls' own Jon Conway failing to control a shot and allowing the Revs' Adam Cristman to net the rebound -- because, according to Messing, the original shot was "diving and dipping." This is beyond drivel. Hell, its not even original stuff. Every time one or other of the manufacturers introduces a new ball (which they tend to do for each major international tournament), off we go with all the criticisms and the praise ... and it's always the goalkeepers who complain. Back the 90s Tony Meola did a commercial about a new ball, in which he was filmed repeatedly picking it out of the net after it had roared past him, and complaining "This really sucks!"

That sort of language was considered a bit much, and the commercial was pulled -- but remember, the commercial was using Meola's complaints to praise the new ball, to increase its sales.

Just four years ago, adidas introduced a new ball, the Roteiro, for the 2004 Euro championship in Portugal. I recall watching a scientist (I know he was a scientist because he was wearing a white jacket, and in TV commercials such people are always formidably clever scientists) tell us how this great new ball was going to, yes, cause problems for goalkeepers and the result would be more scoring, more goals.

That particular scientist no doubt did the decent thing and made a bloody mess of his nice white coat by falling on his sword when the tournament produced only 77 goals in 31 games (there had been 85 goals in 31 games in the previous tournament in 2000).

In short, all the talk about the these new balls is blatant baloney. Yes, yes, they're all designed with more care than a spacecraft -- maybe they have "an adhesive layer that links the ball's special coating to the underlying textile substrate," or they might feature "gas-filled micro-balloons under a foam layer," or even "a six-winged carbon latex bladder," or it could be a "superior syntactic poly-urethane surface plus highly resilient foam thermal bonded panels" that proves their superiority -- and whichever way you slice that lot, it's still baloney. Sales baloney.

And Shep Messing feels it necessary to chime in with more of the same -- all about a new ball that as far as I can see isn't a new ball at all. That would be bad enough, but Messing can't let go. Having moaned about how unfair all this is to the poor goalkeepers, he feels the need to attack the guys who score the goals -- the guys who are supposed to benefit from this "new" ball. Stand by for a thick slice of super-baloney:

"These forwards, they're prima donnas anyway, they run around, they make a hundred mistakes, then they score a goal and they're heroes ... no I don't like this new soccer ball."

Great stuff, Shep. Hey, maybe these forwards make all those mistakes because they don't know what the ball's going to do either? But I really like that idea about making keepers play with one hand tied behind their back. Better yet, let 'em use both hands (two hands! -- and they call themselves soccer players?) ... but could we just gag them instead? That would greatly reduce the baloney factor.