Ball Snob
I haven't always had standards regarding the quality of the gear of the game. Soccer doesn't require much gear (part of the appeal for me. I like simple; I am a simple man). The most important gear is, of course, the ball. When I was a kid in Argentina, in our tiny elementary school concrete playground, we would play with a tennis ball that one of us would sneak in, drawing the goals with chalk against the walls. When I was a teenager, I wouldn't have been able to tell you the difference between one ball or another.
As a young adult I remember when I learned, thanks to my old friend Greg Krier (friend from soccer, skateboarding, hardcore/punk), that the pros used "match balls." These, according to him, were more than a hundred dollars and didn't feel like anything we'd ever had the pleasure to play with. He was right on both counts.
It has been a long time though, and I have had the opportunity, between coaching and playing, to experience a countless amount of brands, styles, designs, levels of inflation. And like with any other craft, one develops a preference for finer tools. And now, if the option is available, I want to play with the best. Once someone gets used to the best, the rest pale in comparison. If I am forced to play with an inferior ball, I get grumpy. What a snob.
The feel of it on, under, off your foot; the sound it makes; how it slides, rolls, bounces, spins; how it sounds when struck; can't be compared.
The ability to discern quality is a curse, but its blessing is well worth it; it dulls the millions of inferior options, but it gives you the ability to find and appreciate the gold among them.
As a young adult I remember when I learned, thanks to my old friend Greg Krier (friend from soccer, skateboarding, hardcore/punk), that the pros used "match balls." These, according to him, were more than a hundred dollars and didn't feel like anything we'd ever had the pleasure to play with. He was right on both counts.
It has been a long time though, and I have had the opportunity, between coaching and playing, to experience a countless amount of brands, styles, designs, levels of inflation. And like with any other craft, one develops a preference for finer tools. And now, if the option is available, I want to play with the best. Once someone gets used to the best, the rest pale in comparison. If I am forced to play with an inferior ball, I get grumpy. What a snob.
The feel of it on, under, off your foot; the sound it makes; how it slides, rolls, bounces, spins; how it sounds when struck; can't be compared.
The ability to discern quality is a curse, but its blessing is well worth it; it dulls the millions of inferior options, but it gives you the ability to find and appreciate the gold among them.
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