“The ball never gets tired” (or “the ball doesn’t get tired”) is a popular soccer adage, cited in print since at least 1991. The saying means that players should pass the ball and move it around, rather than running around with it and wasting energy.
 
The “ball never gets tired” saying has also been infrequently used in basketball and American football.
 
     
Soccer Training Info
The ball never gets tired and always moves faster than any player can.
 
7 November 1991, Trenton (NJ) Evening Times, “Ewing halts Hamilton” (CJIII Boys’ Soccer) by David Porter, pg. C4, col. 6:
“My hat’s off to Hamilton,” Ewing coach Chet Snook said. “They pressured us in those final 30 minutes. They took us out of our game. I thought we needed to move the ball better, knock it to the outside and use the whole field. When you’re playing a physical team like Hamilton, you’ve to to let the ball do the work for you. The ball never gets tired, but we do.”
       
Google Groups: uk.rec.bodybuilding 
Newsgroups: uk.rec.bodybuilding
From: “intersweat”

Date: 2000/10/12
Subject: Re: Sniffing Vanilla
 
Heard a good quote at football training the other night.
“The ball never gets tired”
 
Google Books
Soccer Training:
An Annual Programme
By Jozef Sneyers
Oxford: Meyer & Meyer Sport
2002
Pg. 106:
Let the ball go: the ball never gets tired - in contrast to the players.
     
Soccer Fans Network
Lance Knight
09-17-2004 07:40 AM
Re: Interviews
Roberto Carlos: “It is not the end of a cycle”?
16/09/2004
(...) 
-Could it all be a matter of lack of the right attitude?
-I do not know any player that steps on the pitch to lose and not to run after the ball. I think we are running too much, that’s the problem. We must think more carefully before we start going after the ball, we must be faster with our head because the ball does not get tired.
 
Stars and Stripes
Reay brings British touch to Kadena boys soccer team
Published: May 21, 2005
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Why is a guy from England coaching an American high school soccer team on Okinawa?
(...)
Reay said a former coach of his used to say, “‘The ball doesn’t get tired. Pass and move the ball around.’ You see so many kids not playing the game the right way. It’s nice to … instill that in them at the right age.”
 
OCLC WorldCat record 
La pelota nunca se cansa (The Ball Never Gets Tired—ed.) : la incontenencia verbal de la gente del fútbol
Author: Juan Manuel Díaz; et al
Publisher: Barcelona : Editorial Base, 2007.
Series: Base hispánica, 7. 
Edition/Format:  Book : Spanish : 1 ed
     
A Seat at the A-League
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Asia Cup: Australia 4 Thailand 0 - A-League saves Socceroos
(...)
Japan showed the way - with a classy 4-1 win over Vietnam - Coaches wisdom ‘the ball does not get tired’, after earlier saying “Most of all, I am happy that it has ended without any of our players and staff suffering a heart attack,” he said.
     
Broncos 365
February 11, 2011
The Apprentice Footballer
(...)
To save energy during a game should seek to move the ball more than the body. If you start running in a mad, senseless and without knowing dosed, the player runs out in just minutes and can not endure full-time party hard. There is a well known phrase in football that says “the ball never gets tired,” Well, it must know how to apply at all times. To move the ball and not the player.