i came back after a long christmas break of using blender and i just found this problem while following a tutorial. I made all the steps that are shown in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3wghbZ-Vh4 and i see that isn't the same.
So, the question is, what's happening? what am i doing wrong? Just in case, i unwrapped the ball and isn't looking the same as in the right side preview.
This is how it looks with everything included to look "Realistic or photorealistic" (I'm using the Poliigon materials), and there not much changes in the rendered image.
EDIT: i found that i made a miss-step and didn't unwrap correctly. Now i unwrapped it on sphere projection, but still it looks flat :/