While Pakistani football did not qualify for the global tournament, millions of Pakistanis will still feel proud that ‘Made in Pakistan’ football will shine at the 2022 FIFA World Cup finals.
Together with China, Pakistan is supplying the soccer balls to be used in the forthcoming mega sports event to be played in Doha (Qatar) this winter.
“We have once again been chosen to supply soccer balls for the World Cup, which is an honor for us and a testimony of the quality we have maintained,” said Khawaja Masood Akhtar, the chairman of Forward Sports, a contracting manufacturer of global sports brand Adidas.
Forward Sports which also makes footballs for the German Bundesliga, the French league, and the Champions League, was also the official football provider of the 2014 and 2018 World Cups in Brazil and Russia.
The official ball has been named “Al-Rihla,” Arabic for “The Journey,”. The ball for the 2022 World Cup was unveiled in March by Adidas in Doha.
The football that will be used in the upcoming tournament is technically termed as thermo bonded, which was first introduced in the 2014 FIFA World Cup. In this technique, the 32 panels are thermally glued and bonded by heat which means there are no stitches and allows the ball to keep its original weight when played on a wet surface.
For decades, Sialkot has put Pakistan on the map of the world’s leading football manufacturing countries. The first export of a football from Sialkot was to Singapore in 1922, according to Sialkot’s Phedra Industries.
Pakistan earns $1 billion annually from sports goods exports, including $350 million to $500 million from footballs alone, according to Anadolu Agency report.