Stekelenburg: "Thump all balls"

Monday, 14 June 2010

Maarten Stekelenburg isn't actually in the mood to discuss the ’Jabulani’. "You can bring it up all the time, but there's nothing I can do about it," says Holland's goal keeper about the much discussed World Cup ball. But in the end he does express his feelings about the beach toy: "That ball behaves in the most peculiar ways. Normally you can judge the flight of a ball pretty well. With this ball you can't." And so there's only one thing he can do against Denmark: thump it. "You can catch it seven out of ten times. But three times you can't. Then you can not take those risks.

Maarten Stekelenburg: "I think we have an awful lot of quality"

"It's hard to prepare, but we're working on it every day. That's why there are so many distant shots during training. We trained well in Seefeld, but that was at an altitude of 1.200 meters. But we'll play the first game in Johannesburg at 1.700 meters and at that altitude the swerving is even worse."

Yet the goal keeper is not afraid of a mistake: "When you are afraid you will invoke mistakes." His coach at Ajax - Martin Jol - this season called him "perhaps the best shot stopper in Europe" and just that quality might come at hand during the tournament. "With the Jabulani you must wait as long as possible and stopping a shot is sheer reaction. The longer the distance the harder it is."

"It would be too much to say that I hate that ball, because I know it can work out to our advantage as well. It can swerve our way. It seems sure that we'll see a lot of strange goals this tournament. And that was the whole point of FIFA. They want as many goals as possible at a World Cup and that's why they only reckoned with the preferences of the forwards when they designed the ball."

Even though the designer of the ball - Adidas – is also the sponsor of Stekelenburg, he wasn't involved in the design process. "No, they didn't ask me. I'm not that important, ha ha."

That can change instantly when Holland win the World Cup: "I think we have an awful lot of quality. We will aim for the highest. It will not be easy, but nothing's impossible. We should be able to get to the final. But you need a bit of luck as well, for instance that the ball swerves your way."