Joe Hart convinced 'something is up' with World Cup ball after Mbappe and Messi baffle keepers

Former England goalkeeper Joe Hart has renewed his claim that the official World Cup ball is causing a specific and recurring problem for goalkeepers, using Kylian Mbappe’s 25-yard opener for France against Iraq on Monday as his latest piece of evidence.

Mbappe’s strike, hit at a saveable height and touched by Iraq goalkeeper Mohammed Abbas, still found the net — a pattern Hart says he has now seen far too often to dismiss as coincidence.

“So many times I’ve seen this goal — way too many times for a World Cup for there not to be something up with that football,” Hart said while working as a pundit on the BBC. “It’s when it’s that kind of shoulder height… as soon as they’re not using the curling technique, as soon as that ball is not moving, it’s not spinning, the goalkeepers are struggling.”

Hart was specific about the mechanics he believes are at fault. When a shot arrives flat and without spin at shoulder height, he argues, goalkeepers are consistently misjudging the pace of the ball — getting a hand to it but failing to push it clear.

“He’s got enough time, and a World Cup goalkeeper can get a step in here and dive, but it seems like it’s on him before he’s even ready to make contact,” Hart said of Abbas’s attempt to stop Mbappe. “I’m noticing in this tournament that goalkeepers are getting touches on above their shoulder, and they’re just not able to keep it out, so something’s up.”

Hart said he had raised the issue with fellow pundit Gael Clichy during the first half of the France match, questioning how often top-level goalkeepers get a touch on a shot and still concede. “Very rarely,” he noted, “because they’re good enough that if they do get contact, they get it wide.”

The former Manchester City and Burnley keeper had first flagged the theory earlier in the tournament, pointing to Jordan Pickford’s failure to keep out a Croatian effort and Edouard Mendy’s inability to stop a Mbappe strike against Senegal as further examples. “I honestly feel like this ball is coming onto the goalkeepers a lot faster than they feel it is off the foot,” he said at the time.

The phenomenon is not new to World Cups. The Jabulani ball used at the 2010 tournament in South Africa drew widespread criticism from both outfield players and goalkeepers for its unpredictable movement, and Hart’s comments suggest the current ball may be producing a subtler but equally disorienting effect at the top end of the frame.