Penny floater

A penny floater [1][2] is a kind of cheap football commonly used by children in the Western world.[3] Its name derives from the fact that when they were first developed in the 1960s they cost a penny. The penny floater may have originated in Italy.[4] The floater part comes from the fact that as they are made of a thin layer of hardened plastic filled with air: their light weight makes them susceptible to floating or swerving with the wind.

Penny floaters are commonly used by young children; however, among older children they are an object of ridicule and mocked as cheap toy footballs unsuitable for use. Nonetheless, their cheapness and the fact that they do not damage other objects in urban environments as easily as regular footballs do make them common. Professional footballs are sometimes compared to penny floaters disparagingly, as in the case of the Adidas Jabulani football used in the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The Jabulani was criticised for its performance, which was partly because its internal stitching made it too spherical to spin normally and more like a penny floater in that regard.[5][6]

References
  1. Varley, Ciaran (10 November 2017). "The universal sadness of lost footballs". BBC3. Retrieved 2 February 2018. It got sent to us by a bloke from Newcastle – where they call a 99p flyaway a ‘penny floater’
  2. Roughley, Gregg (7 Jun 2008). "Euro 2008: Switzerland 0-1 Czech Republic - as it happened". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 February 2018. it flew around in circles like a 99p fly-away football from the market
  3. Vogt, RJ (5 January 2016). "Under the Lights". Myanmar Times. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
  4. Hurrey, Adam (13 December 2017). "A Statistical Analysis Of Every Type Of Object That Could Conceivably Be Used For Childhood Games Of Football". The Sportsman. Retrieved 2 February 2018.
  5. Tyers, Alan (5 October 2016). "A 48-team World Cup, the Jabulani and silver goals: football's worst ever bright ideas". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2 February 2018.
  6. Murray, Richard (4 February 2014). "The Brazuca takes aim at World Cup balls of the past". Sports Haze. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
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