In the City of the World Cup Ball

The city’s technical know-how has been growing for more than 175 years. Around 1850, a British garrison was stationed in Sialkot. Local craftsmen first made instruments for the military hospital, then balls for the parade ground.

The industry began with a simple repair: a local cobbler patched a damaged ball, then stitched a second one. Buffalo leather was plentiful. Workshops became businesses; businesses became factories. Long before the British partitioned the subcontinent and Pakistan gained independence in 1947, Sialkot had become an industrial cluster.

The breakthrough in soccer came in the 1970s, when former Danish goalkeeper Eigil Nielsen (1918–2000) joined forces with Pakistani entrepreneur Anwar Khawaja. Khawaja had founded a small factory in Sialkot in 1951, producing 18-panel balls from cowhide. He used leather from young animals because it stretched less. In 1964, his company became the first in Sialkot to receive FIFA approval for its ball. But leather had one drawback: it absorbed water. And soccer is often played in the rain — at least in Europe, where almost all the customers were at the time.

So Nielsen developed a waterproof synthetic ball for his Danish company, Select Sport. He invented the valve system and designed the 32-panel construction: 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons. The shape turned the soccer ball into a nearly perfect sphere.

Nielsen and Khawaja had met in Copenhagen in 1957. They remained friends, but it wasn’t until 1975 that they became business partners. “I’m ready for Sialkot,” Nielsen is said to have told Khawaja. He brought panels with him, had them sewn — and was impressed by the precision of the Pakistani workers.

Nielsen handed over to Khawaja the technology of the modern soccer ball: synthetic leather, a polyurethane coating, a valve system, the 32-panel construction. In return, Khawaja promised, with a handshake, to sell his balls only to Nielsen.

“That was the moment that changed Sialkot forever,” says Khawaja’s son Khurram, 69.

Within a short time, the knowledge spread across the city: at tea stalls, through suppliers and customers, through workers who changed factories. In 1975, Pakistan’s ball exports were still worth only a few million dollars. Soon they passed the hundred-million-dollar mark. Today, about 40 million balls leave the country each year, with exports approaching one billion dollars.

The boss himself walks visitors through the factory. “Doctor Khurram” knows what he is talking about. Khawaja Jr. studied medicine for five years and later worked in a hospital. Then he confessed to his father: “I made a mistake. I would rather make balls.”

His father let him join the company on one condition: “You have to sew a soccer ball by hand. Only if it is perfect can you work here.”

A few months later, Khurram placed a ball on his father’s table. His father examined it and said, “All right.”

Today, Khurram Khawaja runs one of the world’s largest ball manufacturers. His company produces for Select Sport and Derbystar — match balls for leagues in Scandinavia, the Czech Republic, Austria and the Netherlands, and, until this summer, for Germany’s Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal.

The multi-story factory in the middle of Sialkot feels like a labyrinth. It smells of plastic, glue and paint. Each department has its own rhythm, its own sound.

Balls begin flat. First, workers laminate sheets of plastic with latex and foam to make synthetic leather. The laminated material dries for two days. Then the 32 panels are punched out. A woman cuts the valve holes.

Workers apply colors and logos by hand, using silkscreens. A ball with four colors goes through four stages; four people print in sequence. The panels move from table to table. Between stages, they must dry.

The printed panels are then bundled into sets and packed in plastic bags, along with a bladder, a valve and enough thread. Each bag contains one ball: still flat, still in pieces, but ready to be turned by human hands into a sphere.

First, workers use sewing machines to stitch the basic seams of the two ball halves. A special machine joins them, except for the last three panels. Then the stitchers turn the ball inside out. By hand, they insert the bladder and align it to the millimeter with the valve hole.

Finally, the most experienced stitchers close the remaining panels — the most delicate step in the process. It takes three to four months to learn, a year to truly master. If the needle punctures the bladder, the ball is scrap. If the closure succeeds, no one can tell which panel was left open until last.

Then workers inspect every ball from every angle, critically, for about 20 seconds. Is the print in place? Are the seams precise? Is the ball round? “Every ball has to look perfect,” Khurram says. Where color was lost during stitching, painters touch it up with fine brushes.

Geometry is everything. “If the individual panels deviate from one another even slightly, the ball will never be round.”

A metal detector searches for anything that does not belong inside a ball: broken needle tips, metal splinters, earrings, batteries. If it finds something, the ball undergoes surgery, the former doctor explains. “We open the ball, remove the object and close it again.”

A machine measures the ball’s roundness at thousands of points. Under FIFA standards, the deviation may not exceed 1.5 percent.

In the basement research lab stands a steel cage with a shooting machine. It fires the ball against a wall, again and again. A ball must withstand 2,000 shots to meet the FIFA standard; top balls survive more than 3,000.

The lab is run by Mohammed Hussein, 51. Several engineers work there on materials, shape and technology. For Select, Hussein’s team developed the first ball with an integrated chip — technology that detects whether the ball has fully crossed the goal line. “It’s not hard to kick a ball,” Hussein says. Dozens of balls lie around his office. “Making a good one — that’s the hard part.”

At Anwar Khawaja Industries, many balls are still sewn entirely by hand. A skilled stitcher completes four a day, roughly one every two hours. But skilled workers are becoming fewer and costs are rising. Young people hardly learn hand-stitching anymore. “A 150-year-old craft will probably disappear in the next five to ten years,” Khurram fears.

Adidas switched to machine production long ago. Select and Derbystar still hold on to hand-stitched balls. So why doesn’t Khurram stop? “As long as we can sell them, these workers have work,” he says.

Khurram sees himself as a patriarch. He has lunch prepared every day for his 4,000 employees. The starting wage is the equivalent of about $190 a month; especially skilled stitchers, women as well as men, often earn more than a police officer or a teacher. Khurram also pays for health insurance and grants paid time off.

Anyone employed here has a steady job in a country where that is anything but guaranteed. Because not everyone can afford a motorcycle or the daily bus ride to the factory, Khurram has kits delivered to the villages: panels, thread, bladders, everything needed for one ball. There, women and men sew them together by hand.

The road to one of these stitching centers follows a gravel track shared by cars and water buffalo. Inside the hall, fans hum beneath the high ceiling. It is bright; warm air drifts through the open windows.

On low stools set on carpets, about 25 women sit in small groups, usually four at a time, sewing soccer balls by hand. Their movements are quick and even. They hold the ball with their feet and pull thread through the pre-punched panels with both hands. The women speak quietly; now and then, one laughs.

In the back corner, small children play. At a table, two girls bend over their homework. One woman keeps an eye on them all. This is the center’s daycare.

Women who cannot travel into the city — because it is too far, because they have children, or because daily life does not allow it — find work here. At the same wage as in the factory.

One of them is Areeba, 20, a gifted stitcher. She has been sewing soccer balls for two years. At 18, she received her Pakistani identity card, the prerequisite for regular employment.

What does she like about the work? “I need it,” Areeba says. She does not mean only the money. She means the other women, the community, a place outside the home.

In the evening, a delivery van picks up the finished balls and takes them back to the factory. There, they pass through one final quality check.

The existence of these centers has much to do with Nasir Dogar. The 72-year-old came from Islamabad to Sialkot in 1998 to solve a problem. He has stayed to make sure it does not return.

Through his organization, IMAC, Dogar has monitored for nearly thirty years whether children are involved in soccer-ball production. His staff make unannounced visits to factories, stitching centers and private homes.

In the mid-1990s, Sialkot came under international pressure. American television aired images of children allegedly chained while sewing soccer balls. A U.S. congressman launched the “Foul Ball Campaign,” and Adidas and Nike threatened to pull out.

The images were exaggerated, Dogar says, but the problem was real. “There was child labor. But not on the scale that was shown.” Children mainly stitched cheap street balls, not match balls. Match balls require adult strength.

Back then, manufacturers handed material to subcontractors, who distributed it to families sewing at home. Who actually assembled the ball in the end was anyone’s guess. In some families, children helped. Not because they were cheaper, but because they were not in school.

In 1997, the ILO, UNICEF and Sialkot’s sporting-goods makers signed a monitoring agreement in Atlanta. The companies set up stitching centers and moved production out of private homes. Because many women could not or would not leave their homes, a pragmatic solution was found: as soon as three women gathered in a house to sew, the house was registered as an official center.

Since then, Dogar has overseen the system. For visits to homes and centers, he sends women. “In Pakistan, a door is more likely to open for a woman than for a man,” he says.

Today, he says, he finds a child stitching a ball somewhere about every six months. Not as a worker, but sitting beside a mother and joining in.

At first, 180 companies took part in Dogar’s program. Today there are about 50 — among them all the major manufacturers, including Adidas supplier Forward Sports, even though balls are no longer hand-stitched there.

More than child labor, another problem now occupies Dogar: counterfeits. Manufacturers produce more balls than ordered and sell the surplus on the black market. Or white, unprinted balls are exported to Dubai, printed there and later resold as branded goods.

Khawaja Masood Akhtar knows the problem firsthand. On his bookshelf sit a cowhide ball and every Adidas World Cup ball since 2014. Masood, 77, is the founder and chairman of Forward Sports. He has coffee and cookies served and makes one thing clear from the start: “I will talk to you, but you cannot see the factory.”

The reason is secrecy. In his halls on the outskirts of Sialkot, balls that have not yet been launched are already in production. If a photo of the next Bundesliga ball were to leak, Chinese manufacturers could quickly produce cheap copies. That would be a problem for Forward Sports — and for Adidas as well. From next season, the German sporting-goods group will supply the match ball for the German leagues.

After the conversation, Masood ends up showing the factory anyway. Camera and notebook must stay outside. What can be seen is a high-tech production site: lasers cut synthetic material, robots move components, the floors gleam. Balls are no longer sewn here. They are fused.

“Not a single needle is used on this ball,” Masood says, holding the World Cup ball in both hands. It is seamless, “thermo-bonded,” in the technical jargon. The panels fuse under heat and pressure. Water cannot get in; the weight stays the same whether the sun shines, rain falls or snow comes down.

Masood founded Forward Sports in 1991. He had studied civil engineering and already had a job lined up with Pakistan Railways. But his uncle, who ran a ball factory in Sialkot, decided otherwise: “You come here and start producing balls.” Masood obeyed. “In Pakistan, the family is strong,” he says.

The passion came later. Today, Masood holds the World Cup ball like a piece of evidence. “This is the best ball on the planet,” he says. The pride shows on his face. “Making it is the dream of everyone in the ball business.”

What makes a perfect ball? Masood doesn’t pause for long: “It has to have the best flight. You have to be able to play it exactly where you want. And rain or snow can’t touch it.”

Today, Forward Sports employs about 9,000 people in three factories and produces up to 22 million balls a year. The company made its first World Cup ball for Brazil 2014: the Brazuca. Since then, Forward Sports has been part of World Cup production. Developing a new match ball takes three to four years; the company maintains its own research division for that work.

Forward Sports also holds a patent for a ball without air — and therefore without a bladder. It already exists as a children’s ball. When it will be used in a professional match is still unclear.

The idea for a new ball originally comes from Adidas, Masood says. “We implement it, describe the problems and solve them.” A Chinese company is also involved in development and also produces in Indonesia. The Pakistanis and the Chinese are competitors and partners at the same time.

The official match ball accounts for only a small part of production. The quantities are low, the price is high. Volume comes from replicas, training balls and entry-level balls.

For the 2026 World Cup, Forward Sports has produced the largest quantity in its history. Ninety-five percent of the balls have already been shipped, Masood says.

Other companies in Sialkot, by contrast, are feeling the effects of the war between the United States and Iran. Shipments across the Arabian Sea no longer arrive reliably. Anyone who wants to deliver promotional balls in time for the World Cup often has to switch to air freight — at almost $10 per kilogram. A soccer ball weighs about half a kilo, so transport alone costs roughly $5 per ball. By sea, it would be less than 50 cents.

During a World Cup, Sialkot receives orders not only from the major sports brands, but also from dozens of multinationals such as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. They do not order 500 balls; they order 500,000, printed with their company logos.

Because of the war, part of that business is now disappearing.

China is hardly an alternative for American buyers; the United States imposes import tariffs of nearly 150 percent on Chinese goods. The 2026 World Cup — the largest in history, with three host countries, 48 teams and a huge American market — could therefore become the World Cup with the fewest promotional balls in decades.

“You will not see many ball promotions in the United States during this World Cup,” says Syed Ahtesham Mazar, president of the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce. “The war has thrown everything off.”

Mazar does not lose his optimism. Sialkot thinks long-term. The city’s exports are worth almost three billion dollars. In the past two years alone, more than 12,000 new companies have been founded — often by young university graduates who would rather build something of their own than look for a job. They sell through Alibaba, Amazon or eBay and within a few years grow into small and midsize businesses.

Soccer is Sialkot’s best-known product, but far from its only one. The city manufactures surgical instruments, leather goods, textiles, sportswear, gloves, hockey sticks, cricket equipment, even musical instruments. No other city in Pakistan has a higher per-capita income.

Sialkot has its own international airport, privately financed and driven by the Chamber of Commerce. The city has recently even acquired its own airline, Sial Air. For a country of about 260 million people, with fewer than 50 aircraft and air traffic roughly 80 percent carried by Middle Eastern airlines, that is remarkable. Sial Air flies to Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Medina, Muscat, Dubai and Abu Dhabi — to the places where many Pakistani migrant workers live.

But because Sialkot lives almost entirely from exports, the city remains vulnerable. The badminton racket tells the story. In the 1970s, Sialkot’s factories dominated the market with wooden rackets. Then China and Taiwan arrived with rackets made of graphite and steel. Pakistan missed the new technology. The market was lost.

With balls, Sialkot has learned the lesson. Manufacturers have invested in machinery, thermo-bonding and hybrid technologies. Twenty years ago, the city had about 2,000 soccer-ball producers; today there are about 200. Many small firms disappeared because new technology requires capital. “It’s not our customers’ love that makes them work with us,” Mazar says. “They need good products. And if we don’t stay technologically up to date, we’re out.”

At five o’clock, the siren sounds again. The shift is over. Thousands leave the factory, men and women separately. In front of the exit, they line up and are searched, so no one walks off with a ball. Men collect their wives on motorcycles. Buses fill up. Some are reserved for women. Outside the gate, a man presses sugarcane juice.

On the way to Lahore, we stop at a bright shopping mall. Puma, Nike and Adidas sell balls here. Puma’s come from Pakistan. Nike’s come from Vietnam. Adidas offers the official match ball, made in Indonesia. Next to it lies a cheaper replica from China.

In Pakistan, where one of the world’s best balls is made, the shelves are stocked with imports.