MOSCOW – When millions of football lovers cheer on their favourite teams atthe2018 FIFA World Cuplink>tobe held in Russia this summer, Pakistanis will have a special reason torejoice, although the 198th-ranked football nation will not beparticipating in the mega event.
Pakistan’s famous footballs will be used in the World Cup matches, makingover 200 million Pakistanis feel their presence in the event.
Russian Ambassador to Pakistan Alexey Dedov confirmed earlier in the weekthat his country was going to use Pakistan-made footballs for the World Cupmatches.
Located on the outskirts of northeastern Sialkot city, workers at a localsports company – which is a contracting manufacturer of global sports brandAdidas – are working extra hours to ensure on-time delivery of thefootballs.
The city, which borders India, has been famous for producing finest qualitysports goods and has been supplying footballs for mega events for a longtime.
Forward Sports, which also makes footballs for the German Bundesliga,France Ligue 1 and the Champions League, was also the official footballprovider of 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
“This is an honour for us, that we are going to provide footballs for theworld cup once again. We are very excited to meet this challenge,” KhawajaMasood, the chairman of the company, told Anadolu Agency.
Refusing to give the exact numbers of footballs the company is going tosupply for the World Cup alone due to restrictions from Adidas, Khawajasaid his firm produced a total of 700,000 footballs a month.
The football that will be used in the upcoming tournament is technicallytermed as thermo bonded, which was first introduced in the 2014 FIFA WorldCup.
Before that, Pakistanlink> had supplied handstitched football for almost all the World Cups from the 1990s to 2010.
Other types of footballs produced in Sialkot are glued balls and handstitched balls.
Thermo bonded balls are made by attaching the panels through heat – thelatest technology adopted by Adidas and transferred to Forward Sports in2013.
“Although Pakistan football team will not be participating in theforthcoming World Cup, its presence will be felt in all the matches[because of the balls],” Khawaja told Anadolu Agency.
According to Husnain Cheema, president of the Pakistan Sports GoodsAssociation, the country will export around 10 million footballs across theworld this year.Child labour allegations
Pakistan annually earns $1bn from sports goods exports, which includes$350m to $500m from footballs alone, Cheema added.
The country’s thriving football industry first came under internationalscrutiny in the late ’90s when it was accused of using children forhand-stitching footballs in some of the factories in Sialkot.
Famous sports company Nike had cancelled its orders of hand stitchedfootball in 2006 after it was accused of promoting child labour.
However, the local manufacturers claim the child labour issue wasexaggerated.
“There were complaints about child labour. Some small factories, mostly setup at homes, had employed children for hand-stitching footballs,” ShaikhJhangir Iqbal, chief executive of Silver Sports company – a contractingmanufacturer of Nike – told Anadolu Agency.
“These home-based factories no longer exist now,” Iqbal said adding thatthe international labour rights groups had been monitoring Sialkot’s sportsgoods industry.
“There has been no major complaint vis-a-vis use of child labour [in sportsindustry] since 2006,” he said. – Al Jazeera