In football — and in other sports, such as tennis and baseball —, the ballboy’s role is to collect and return to the players the balls that leave the field during a match. Once that’s done, he takes the one that had left the game.
In club tournaments, such as the Brazilian Championship, these assistants are selected by the home team.
At the World Cup, played on a neutral field, the ball boys are chosen and trained by FIFA among volunteers, generally young athletes from clubs in the host countries.
In this year’s edition, which takes place in the United States, Canada and Mexico, some of the ball boys were selected in an action by an event sponsor.
To try to avoid undue interference, the Premier League, the first division of the English Championship, determined from 2024, via regulations, that the ball boy will no longer hand the ball directly to the player.
In the system, called “multiball”, plastic cones are spread around the lawn, and a ball is placed on each one. It is up to the player to catch the ball that is in one of these cones to restart the match. The ball boy’s role, in this model, is exclusively to refill the empty cone.
From 2025 onwards, the FPF (São Paulo Football Federation), the CBF (Brazilian Football Confederation) and Conmebol (South American Football Confederation) announced the adoption of the same Premier League system in their tournaments — this includes the Campeonato Paulista, the Campeonato Brasileiro and the Libertadores.
The World Cup, however, does not adopt “multiball”.
You may notice, during the games, that there are some balls strategically positioned outside the four lines, without cones, for the players to collect themselves — the ball boys, however, can still hand them directly to the athletes, when necessary.
In the World Cup, to try to prevent waxing (when someone deliberately takes too long to restart the match), instead of isolating the ball boy, FIFA imposed new rules for throw-ins and goal kicks.
If the player responsible for the kick intentionally delays the throw-in, the referee gives a signal indicating that, from that moment on, a five-second countdown begins. If the charge is not taken within this time, possession of the ball is given to the opposing team.
Following the same logic, if the goalkeeper, a player or the team intentionally delays the goal kick, the referee signals the start of a five-second count. If the move is not made within the time limit, a corner is awarded to the opposing team.
Origin of the term gandula
For many years this story about the origin of the term gandula spread: it appeared because of the Argentine player Bernardo Gandulla (1916-1999), who played for Vasco in 1939.
Legend has it that he was a bad player and tried to compensate for his lack of skill, in reserve, looking for balls that left the field and replacing them quickly.
The word, however, had already been used before — there is a record from 1933 in the newspaper Diário da Noite, for example.
Gandulla wasn’t a bad player either: he was Argentine champion twice with Boca Juniors.
In fact, the term comes from “gandul”, a Spanish word that means vagabond, lazy. For a job that requires so much physical effort, the etymology seems unfair.
The word “gandul” comes from the Arabic “gandûr”, which means “young woman of modest class who affects elegance and lives without working”.
“Gandular” is a regional slang from Rio Grande do Sul that means living at the expense of others, parasitizing.
It’s still unfair to the ball boys, but the idea of a young person who works apart from other, more notorious people, comes a little closer to the ball boy’s role.
