When World Cup games kick off in Qatar, the best players on the planet are passing, heading and shooting with the new “Al Rihla” football, whose glossy design offers state of the art speed and accuracy, according to its maker Adidas.Millions of the Al Rihla balls — the name means “the journey” in Arabic — have been shipped from a factory on the secluded outskirts of Sialkot, a small industrial hub in northern Pakistan, where the German company’s contract manufacturer Forward Sports runs one of the world’s largest football-making operations.
Sialkot’s residents mostly share their compatriots’ devotion to cricket, in which Pakistan’s national team earlier this month were Twenty20 World Cup runners-up. The sport’s popularity also proved a vote-winner for former cricketer Imran Khan, helping him to become prime minister in 2018.
While Pakistan’s football team has never qualified for a Fifa World Cup, Sialkot has been a winner off the pitch. It has withstood the rise of China, automation and Pakistan’s political and economic instability to build a world-class football and sports manufacturing hub, attracting leading brands in a country otherwise starved of international exporters.