Thai soccer ball makers put stamp on World Cup
(iht.com)
Updated: 2006-07-03 11:49

On the field and on the sidelines, the World Cup is dominated by men. But in the sweltering factory here where the official World Cup soccer balls are cut, stitched and glued, it is a woman's world.

Only about a dozen of the 250 workers who assemble the Adidas-brand balls here are men. And Akiyoshi Kitano, the Japanese supervisor of the factory, said it is better that way. When it comes to production goals, women are much better at handling the ball, he said.

"The ladies are more skillful," Kitano said, adding that their fingers are more nimble and their work more precise.

Of all the logistics involved in the World Cup - the ticket sales, the advertising, the security - you could argue that the workers in this factory about two hours southeast of Bangkok have the most important job. The tournament could conceivably proceed without groundskeepers, ticket punchers or marketing executives. But with no ball to kick around, there would not be much of a game.

Perhaps in a small way, then, this makes the employees who churn out what Adidas calls +Teamgeist balls the heroes of the game, albeit meagerly paid ones. They earn about $200 a month including overtime, less than the price of some seats at World Cup matches.

A hero's welcome is what Wipa Dumklang, 30, who helps package the balls in the factory, recently received when she returned to her rice-growing village in northeastern Thailand and told her family about her job.

"Villagers came up to me and said, 'You made the ball for the World Cup,'" Wipa said.

Paitoon Ausin, 35, a quality control supervisor, said he felt pangs of pride when he saw the ball he helped produce being kicked around in front of an audience of millions.

"I watch the World Cup almost every night," Paitoon said. "There are moments when the camera zooms into the ball, and I think, 'Someone here made that ball.'"

Thailand did not qualify for the tournament this year, and many Thais say it will be years before their national team is good enough to advance. So in some ways the ball is the country's contribution to the quadrennial event.

And it is not just a Thai contribution. In a globalized manufacturing world, the ball is almost as international as the World Cup itself.

The synthetic leather that covers the ball is made in South Korea. The thin layer of foam inside each ball is produced in Japan. The ball's "bladder" - the rubber pouch that holds the air - is imported from India. The cotton material for the "carcass" that holds the bladder comes from Vietnam. And the chemicals that coat the ball are from Germany.

Workers make about 1,800 +Teamgeist balls a day at the factory, and the production numbers are kept on what looks like a scoreboard high above the factory floor. The balls are sold to the public for about $150.

Much has been said about the ball, developed by Adidas and Molten, a Japanese company that specializes in sports balls. With 14 panels instead of 32, it is rounder, and it reportedly flies faster and, goalies say, somewhat more erratically than previous balls.

Balls here are continually tested for roundness. And a few times a day a randomly chosen ball is put into a "shooter" machine that checks the durability of the ball by thrusting it against a wall 3,500 times at 70 kilometers, or 40 miles, an hour.

But there are some secrets contained in the factory here that most fans presumably do not know: All balls are not created equal. Even with high-technology equipment and top-grade materials, the balls turned out here vary in weight by as much as 30 grams, or 1 ounce, with the final product weighing anywhere from 420 to 450 grams.

"The top players can feel a difference of five grams," Kitano said. This raises the tantalizing prospect that one of the workers in this factory making about $10 a day could help decide the outcome of a World Cup game by adding a few more stitches here, some extra glue there - enough to alter the trajectory of the ball.


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