Simple physics show the controversial goal kick that ended Norway’s barnstorming 2026 FIFA World Cup run did not hit the spidercam cable as suggested by angry players and fans, according to a machine learning expert from The University of Western Australia.
Norway was 1-0 up in its quarter-final clash with England on July 11 when the ball, kicked by goalkeeper Ørjan Nyland during first-half stoppage time, passed close to the cable, then appeared to dip in mid-air and fall straight to the ground.
The ball fell to England’s Elliot Anderson and reached Jude Bellingham two passes later, setting him up to score an equaliser that some argue should have been disallowed. England went on to win the match 2-1 in extra time.
Several Norway players immediately protested the goal, saying it should not have stood because the ball had touched the cable, altering its trajectory.
Under the Laws of the Game, if the ball touches an external object while in play the referee should stop play and restart with a dropped ball. Head coach Ståle Solbakken and others confronted referee Clément Turpin at halftime, with Solbakken later saying the ball ‘dropped straight down from heaven’.
However, FIFA later said the ball sensor had recorded no contact, showing no peak in the ‘heartbeat of the ball’ when in the air, and that there was therefore no evidence that the ball had touched the overhead wire.
Associate Professor Ronnie Das, a data scientist from the UWA Business School who specialises in machine learning sports analytics, said the dispute had set one instrument, inaccessible to the public, against the word of a national team.
“The broadcast footage, however, is public and it contains enough information to test the claim independently,” Associate Professor Das said.
“Given neither side published data to support their position, I decided to run a scientific analysis.”
Associate Professor Das screen-recorded the broadcast clip and annotated each frame of the ball’s flight by hand – a total of 200 notations across roughly 50 frames – to measure the ball’s flight against three fixed pitch landmarks.
“I found no detectable impact. The flight is one smooth curve, consistent with ordinary aerodynamics, and it independently corroborates FIFA’s sensor,” Associate Professor Das said.
“The physics also explain why players honestly saw the ball drop from the sky: air resistance makes a long kick fall more steeply than it rises.
“Spin bends the path further through the Magnus effect – a phenomenon where a spinning object moving through a fluid experiences a sideways force, causing its path to curve.
“The description of the ball ‘dropping down straight from heaven’ is an accurate perception – but the steep drop is a property of ordinary ball flight, not evidence of interference.”
