Photo by Salim Matramkot / The Peninsula
DOHA: The World Cup is influencing everywhere – wardrobes, art exhibitions, memorabilia, and even the humongous football boot seen at Katara Cultural Village.
The Peninsula spoke to the Artist and Curator behind the boot, M Dileef who hails from India and is a Guinness World Record holder himself. “I made this big boot with the idea that Indians should get a participation in the World Cup.”
India has never participated in the FIFA World Cup but qualified by default in 1950 and later withdrew because of the disagreement over team selection and insufficient practice time.
“I made this big boot with the idea that Indians should get participation in the World Cup. Being the venue for the biggest football match in the world, Qatar embraces all cultural diversity,” explained Dileef.
M Dileef
Indians constitute the largest community in Qatar with over 700,000.
The artist who is also the first Indian to become a member of the International Society of Caricature Artists Association in the US emphasised that this country “embraces all cultural diversity.”
“All the countries are gathering here. It is an opportunity that blurs the borders of the countries. The boundaries of nation, race, land and language have disappeared. All the people in the world are standing together here.”
For him, unveiling the big boot is one of his most memorable moments, and expressed that the upcoming sporting tournament will bring people together. “I firmly believe that this World Cup can lead the humanity to greater heights.” Dileef is also known to be the creator of the world’s longest Quran, the largest marker pen, and largest bicycle, to name a few.
Producing the world’s largest football boot took seven months and was made in Kerala, southern part of India. It is 17 feet long, 7 feet high, weighs over 500 kg, and is constructed using the same materials used to make football boots: fiber, leather, rexine, foam sheet, and acrylic sheet.
It attempts to set a Guinness World Record for the world’s largest football boot which no country has ever achieved before. The only records Guinness has are: largest clown boot, largest wellington boot race, largest cowboy boot, largest felt boot, largest hiking/work boot, and largest cowboy boot sculpture.
Katara Public Diplomacy Center (KPDC) CEO and Global Public Diplomatic Network Secretary General, Engr. Darwish Ahmed Al Shaibani praised the efforts of the Indian community in gifting the football boot to Qatar. “They are the ones who are presenting this big boot, they are not in the World Cup but they are in Qatar, football is not their best game but they are contributing to this game."
The project is organised by an international non-profit youth organisation, focus international, in collaboration with KPDC.
The world’s largest football boot is located near Katara Pigeon Towers and Katara Masjid.
