Telstar18: From Pakistan to the world and beyond

Pakistani fans, who were overjoyed at the news of footballs made in Sialkot being used in2018 FIFA World Cup, now have another feat to celebrate!

A recent video, released by Russian state space agency Roscosmos and doing rounds on social media, shows two Russian cosmonauts — Anton Shkaplerov and Oleg Artemyev — engaged in a makeshift game of football in…

… wait for it …

SPACE!

You heard that right. Shkaplerov and Artemyev, both wearing official FIFA World Cup Russia 2018 T-shirts, take one of the Sialkot-manufactured footballs to zero-gravity habitable artificial satellite —the International Space Station (ISS) and hold a match thousands of kilometres up in the sky!

In the cosmic match, as RT reports, one of the two can be seen defending a goalpost made of Russian flag while the other kicks to score goals with the Adidas Telstar 18 footballs.

The Adidas Telstar 18 footballs are manufactured in Sialkot, Pakistan, especially for the FIFA World Cup 2018.

Earlier, Forward Sports — the company that manufactures the Adidas Telstar 18 footballs — explained that they made "footballs for the German Bundesliga, France Ligue 1, and the Champions League" as well.

Earlier, Khawaja Masood, the chairman of Forward Sports, the company that manufactures the Adidas Telstar 18 footballs, had said: "This is an honour for us … that we are going to provide footballs for the world cup once again. We are very excited to meet this challenge."

It is quite hilarious, in fact, to see that as they stretch and lunge to save the other from scoring a goal or plan and kick the football, they eventually end up rotating a few times before they are able to stop, making it quite an enjoyable experience.

The training session in the orbit around the Earth was staged in the honour of the upcoming FIFA World Cup, scheduled to take place in Russia.

The ball has, however, returned to Earth alongside the crew on the Soyuz MC-07 y.

Oh, how Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale would be so, so proud of the two of you, Shkaplerov and Artemyev!