With less than two weeks to the start of the World Cup, journalists around the world have been running the hoary tales of goalkeepers complaining about the new Adidas ball. This year, it's a little different: the outfielders are complaining too.

"It's very weird," Brazil striker Luis Fabiano said Sunday. "All of a sudden it changes trajectory on you. It's like it doesn't want to be kicked. It's incredible, it's like someone is guiding it. You are going to kick it and it moves out of the way. I think it's supernatural, it's very bad."

Soccer is a massive marketing machine, and a huge part of that is merchandising. Too much revenue goes to flying soccer bureaucrats and their fat cat cronies around the world to watch matches in suits as they sit on their hands, but a lot of money still filters down to the roots of the game. At every World Cup, the biggest merchandise sales are apparel, followed by the ball.

As part of the hype for the ball, it's always made of the "newest space age material" and is "lighter, faster, and stronger than ever before!" Goalies complain because the swerve motion on the ball gets wilder and wilder—and over the years the goalkeepers, always the smartest guys on the pitch (if I make typos today, it's because I'm still wearing my gloves from last night's game), have learned to complain before the fact to set up complaints after the fact.

But this year Adidas has gone too far, too far I tell you! Or, rather, the outfielders will tell you. In years past, the joke among attackers was that you kicked the World Cup ball right at the goalie, and let the ball do the rest. This year, the strikers aren't laughing.

Italy striker Giampaolo Pazzini compared the ball to something for sale at a supermarket, calling it a "disaster."

"It moves so much and makes it difficult to control. You jump up to head a cross and suddenly the ball will move and you miss it," Pazzini said.

"There is no way to hide it," Brazil midfielder Julio Baptista said. "It's bad for the goalkeepers and it's bad for us. It's really bad. The players try to cross it and it goes to the opposite direction they intended it to go."

It's too late to switch balls now. The solution for next time is actually easy: Adidas also makes the Champions' League ball. That ball is carefully approved by many clubs and any changes or modifications undergo rigourous testing before ever being put in play. Changes are tiny from year to year. The answer, then, is to use the Champions' League ball, with world cup paint on it instead of the Champions' League logo.

If the complaints about this year's World Cup ball are justified, we might be in for some fairly ridiculous soccer. Teams that keep the ball on the deck will have a serious advantage. Teams that play Route 1-style will be eliminated sooner than expected.