Dubai: The UAE has once again set another Guinness World Record with the largest football mosaic of the UAE flag in Downtown Dubai.
As part of the UAE’s 43rd National Day celebrations, Standard Chartered decided to break a world record by creating a 280 square metre long mosaic made out of 6,000 special footballs in the four colours of the UAE flag.
The record was officially broken at the bank’s headquarters in Emaar Square after a Guinness World Record judge measured the mosaic and made sure it met the world record guidelines.
The event also came as part of Standard Chartered’s recent launch of a campaign called #UAE pride which aims to engage UAE residents and Emiratis with the bank’s National Day celebrations through social networks.
Chief Executive Officer of Standard Chartered, Mohsin Nathani, who placed the last football in the mosaic, said the bank had wanted to celebrate National Day in a different way this year, and the idea of breaking a world record “was a nice way from the bank to thank the UAE.”
“During the National Day preparations at the bank, a team was formed to come up with some ideas, and I was surprised that they had come up with such a brilliant idea which made us break a Guinness World Record title today for the largest football mosaic,” he said.
Guinness World Record’s judge, Pravin Patel said the UAE had broken around 150 world records already.
"It is great to see a world record beating a previous record. There are always a specific set of guidelines that need to be met in order to earn a world record, and for this one, I had to make sure it was made out of footballs of course, and that the balls were touching each other and also if they had been blown up to the right amount. Then the length and width were measured,” he said.
Speaking to one of the team members, who had volunteered to put the mosaic together, she said the group had started working on the project since 6am, and that they were pleased to have earned the title after all the hard work.
“When we first started putting the whole thing together, there was a lot of confusion because it was so hard to organise the round balls and keep them in place, but then we put our hands all together and managed to get it done, ” said Juliana David.
During the event, there were T-shirts and footballs being sold to people who had attended to raise money for a Standard Chartered initiative called ‘Seeing is Believing,’ a global programme aimed at tackling avoidable blindness and visual impairment.
