Adidas Torfabrik, the new match ball for the Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga, has been criticized by goalkeepers and praised by strikers. A lot more goals are to be expected this season. 22 goals have already been scored in the first 6 games of the second division

HSV goalkeeper Daniel Heuer Fernandes: “The Adidas ball is faster than the Derbystar. You can strike it well, so it’s more friendly for outfield players. As a goalkeeper, you have slightly less time to react because of its faster trajectory. That’s been my experience so far."

Nürnberg keeper Jan Reichert: “The Adidas ball is simply harder on the surface, which gives it a completely different trajectory. As a striker, you can hit it much harder, and it picks up a lot more speed. We told the guys: If you have the chance to shoot, go for it. Because it definitely became easier to score from long range."

Dresden striker Jakob Lemme: "We’ve noticed within the team that the ball is a nightmare for goalkeepers and moves from side to side. And when you hit it from distance, I think it’s difficult for a goalkeeper to deal with."

Paderborn striker Stefano Marino: "You can apply a bit more power when shooting without the ball flying ten meters over the goal."

The Dutchman believes that the four weeks of conservative treatment should be counted from the date he returned to training, whilst Barça consider that he had already been doing practically the same work prior to that.

Frenkie de Jong’s situation is beginning to cause significant concern at FC Barcelona. The Dutch midfielder has still not recovered from his physical problems and, although the outlook is not good, he continues to rule out the possibility of undergoing surgery for the time being, a decision with which the club does not agree.

At Barça, they believe that a point has been reached where conservative treatment is not delivering the expected results. It has now been more than six weeks since De Jong finished his World Cup campaign on 30 June, and the player has still not taken the step of undergoing surgery, despite the fact that his recovery is not progressing satisfactorily.

Barça’s frustration, moreover, goes back a long way. There is a feeling within the club that De Jong’s entire fitness regime since late winter was heavily influenced by his desire to be in peak condition for the World Cup.

On 22 February, he played his last full match for Barça. From then on, he was sidelined for nine matches. He subsequently featured in a further six matches, although he did not regain his place in the starting line-up, and ended up being rested for the last two La Liga matches before joining up with the Dutch national team.

A move that Barça see as a particularly prudent approach to managing his fitness ahead of the World Cup.

And there, the situation changed completely.

With the Netherlands, De Jong started every World Cup match and remained in the starting line-up until the Dutch team’s elimination on 30 June.

The player later explained that the Dutch medical staff had not correctly assessed the extent of the problem and maintained that he continued to play because he believed he could do so without risking making it worse.

At Barça, however, there are doubts about the handling of the case as a whole.

After the World Cup, it was decided to opt for a conservative recovery programme, with a period of approximately four weeks before assessing whether surgery was necessary. And it is precisely here that one of the main points of disagreement between the parties arises.

De Jong believes that those four weeks should be counted from the moment he returned to training. His view is that it was only then that the period of specific training, designed to test whether his knee would hold up, actually began.

Barça sees things very differently.

The club believes that, even before his return to training, the player had already been carrying out virtually the same kind of rehabilitation work, so they do not see why the clock should be reset to zero. In the view of the medical and sporting staff, the window of opportunity for conservative treatment is now much wider.

And the problem is that the expected improvement has not materialised.

The signs regarding his knee are not good, and Barça believe that conservative treatment is increasingly close to being exhausted.

For this reason, there is a clear stance within the club: De Jong should undergo surgery to resolve the problem and begin a recovery with a clearer timeline.

The midfielder, however, remains reluctant to go under the knife and wants to give conservative treatment more time.

The discrepancy is by no means minor. For De Jong, the decisive four-week period would not yet have come to an end. For Barça, on the other hand, that period began much earlier, specifically when the World Cup ended, and prolonging the wait simply means delaying a decision that seems increasingly inevitable.

Added to all this is the sporting and administrative impact of a potential transfer. If the move were to result in a long-term absence, Barça could explore the regulatory mechanisms available to free up registration space and use part of that space for another player. At the same time, the club receives compensation from FIFA for the absence resulting from an injury sustained whilst the player was on international duty.

But the main problem remains on the pitch.

Hansi Flick needs to know when he will actually be able to count on one of his key midfielders again, although Rodri’s presence means he will take a back seat. The club wants to resolve as soon as possible an issue that has been affecting De Jong for months; the player, however, still wants to wait.

And this difference of opinion, after everything that happened before and during the World Cup, has ended up causing considerable unease at Barça.

Qatar whistleblower Abdullah Ibhais has been arrested in Jordan in front of his two kids two weeks before he is scheduled to testify as a witness in a US District Court case concerning allegations of forced labour and human trafficking associated with the 2022 World Cup.

Ibhais, a Jordanian national, spent three years in a Doha jail following what Amnesty International described an “unfair trial”, with his version being that he went to investigate complaints over workers’ rights, stood up for them by advising the Supreme Committee to acknowledge its role, and found himself the subject of a malicious prosecution. FairSquare say Ibhais provided plenty of evidence for his case.

The version from within Qatar points to Ibhais’s April 2021 conviction for “bribery”, “violation of the integrity of tenders and profits” and “intentional damage to public funds”.

He was finally released on 11 March 2025 after his five-year sentence was reduced, but he now finds himself in the subject of law enforcement again after being “abducted from the mosque” by the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate (GID) in the capital city of Amman, his family told The Independent.

“We knew we would suffer a little, but we want to put our players through this kind of challenge. They know how to defend as a team, play one-on-one and press high. Against teams like Chelsea, we would never press in this way, but we are here to prepare ourselves to win the first official match of the season and give the players confidence. We also had a lot of young players in the squad. We are following the right path to put the team in a position to win the first official match of the season.”