Pakistan may not have made it to the FIFA World Cup 2018 that begins next week in Russia, but the country would be represented in all the matches of the event by Telstar 18.

The Adidas Telstar 18 is the official match ball of the 2018 FIFA World Cup produced in Pakistan’s Sialkot city.

It is designed by the company Adidas, a FIFA Partner and FIFA World Cup official match ball supplier since 1970, and based on the concept of the first Adidas’s World Cup match ball.

The name of the ball was revealed on last year at the official presentation in Moscow by Lionel Messi, Argentine’s star footballer, forward for Spanish club Barcelona.

According to information available on the internet, the Telstar 18 pays homage to Adidas’s first World Cup match ball, named the Telstar, which was itself named for its resemblance to the original Telstar communications satellite. The word “Telstar” is a combination of the words “television” and “star.

Sialkot

Sialkot is the world’s largest producer of hand-sewed footballs, with local factories manufacturing 40~60 million footballs a year.

The 2014 FIFA World Cup’s footballs were also made by a company based in Sialkot.

It is  the world’s largest centre of surgical instrument manufacturing.

The city  is also noted for its leather goods. Leather for footballs is sourced from nearby farms.