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DOHA: Watching Sunday’s World Cup closing, Ahmed Al-Salem was extra emotional than most soccer followers when Qatar’s emir positioned a black and gold cloak over the shoulders of Argentina’s victorious captain Lionel Messi.
The garment Messi wore as he lifted the soccer trophy was a $2,200 ‘bisht’, a conventional robe worn by males for weddings, graduations and official occasions — and it was made by Salem’s household firm.
Salem watched Argentina beat France in a restaurant close to the household’s retailer in Doha’s Souq Waqif market, having earlier handed two of the fragile handmade cloaks to World Cup officers — one in Messi’s diminutive dimension and one to suit the taller French captain Hugo Lloris.
“We didn’t know who they had been for and I used to be surprised,” he advised AFP of the second when the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, dressed Messi within the cloak.
Salem acknowledged his firm tag and is now celebrating his personal World Cup victory.
The Al-Salem retailer, a longstanding bisht provider to Qatari royalty, usually sells eight to 10 clothes a day.
On Monday, the day after the ultimate, gross sales shot as much as 150, together with three copies of the top-of-the-range bisht made well-known by Messi, stated Salem.
“At one stage there have been dozens ready outdoors the shop,” he stated.
“They had been almost all Argentinians,” he added as he watched eight supporters of the brand new world champions sing their “Muchachos” (mates) anthem and take footage of themselves whereas sporting a fragile bisht and carrying a duplicate of the World Cup trophy.
A stream of followers got here into the store as Salem spoke to AFP, and all of them applauded the emir’s gesture.
“We had been all comfortable once we noticed that, it was a present from one king to a different king,” stated Mauricio Garcia as he tried on the cloak, however determined the worth tag was too excessive to purchase.
Some commentators, predominantly European, criticized Messi’s shirt being lined for the trophy presentation.
However the second was welcomed by Arab social media customers.
Salem and different Arab commentators defined the intention was to “honor” Messi and that the gesture had been misunderstood.
“When a sheikh attire an individual in a bisht, this implies honoring and appreciating this individual,” Salem stated.
It was a “essential second” for Qatar because it seeks a World Cup publicity enhance, stated Carole Gomez, a professor of sports activities sociology on the College of Lausanne, in Switzerland.
“These footage are broadly unfold about, conserved and reissued,” she stated.
Salem stated when World Cup officers went to his retailer “they needed the lightest and most clear material.”
“I used to be shocked as a result of we’re in winter, so evidently the objective was to point out the Argentine uniform and never cowl it,” he stated.
Whereas the bisht is worn in lots of Gulf nations, Al-Salem is the most important of about 5 Qatari producers, using about 60 tailors.
Every bisht takes per week to make and goes by way of a seven stage completion, with totally different employees including totally different strains of gold braid to the entrance and arms.
For Messi’s bisht, the gold thread got here from Germany and the Najafi cotton material was imported from Japan.
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