In football, goalkeeper needs gloves to keep his hand safe and enhance his ability to catch the ball. This ability can be developed by controlling the friction between gloves and the football. The aim of the present work is to make quantitative measurements of the friction coefficient between glove and the ball surfaces. The tested gloves are made of ten different materials to be sticky. Friction tests have been carried out by sliding the football against the surface of the glove fixed on the table of the test rig.
From the results it can concluded that neoprene coated glove recorded relatively higher friction coefficient values reached to 1.13. Therefore, it is recommended to use such types of gloves. The high friction values highlight the importance of proper choice of the glove materials. Besides, the materials tested as surface coatings for the gloves of the football goalkeepers can be ranked based on friction coefficient displayed by sliding against football. Those materials are neoprene, nitrile, latex palm, polyvinyl chloride, nylon knit nitrile, cotton, kevlar, polypropylene, latex, and styrene butadiene copolymer. The first fourth types are recommended for application. In addition to that, the proposed sport gloves should be covered by a layer made of rubber to provide non-slip gripping. Those gloves should comprise a textile which includes a plurality of small dots of rubber disposed on its surface to facilitate improved gripping. Polyvinyl chloride coated gloves provides high grip at relatively higher loads. The high friction difference at low and high loads confirms the importance of proper choice of glove materials of consistent friction trend with increasing the applied load.Finally, kevlar, styrene, nylon knit nitrile butadiene copolymer, polypropylene and cotton displayed very low values of friction coefficient. These observations can limit the use of those materials as glove materials.