Durban — Qatar wants the 2022 World Cup mascot of a flying white headdress to symbolise football’s showcase tournament, just as the noisy vuvuzela horn did when South Africa hosted it in 2010.
A flying keffiyah headdress named La’eeb, meaning super skilful player in Arabic, is the official World Cup mascot and is omnipresent on billboards across Qatar and on television.
“La’eeb is a fun and mischievous character who comes from the mascotverse, a parallel world where all tournament mascots live,” world football’s governing body Fifa said in its announcement.
The keffiyeh headdress, also known in the Gulf as a shemagh or a ghutra, is designed to protect against the sun, sand and dust.
Bertrand Roine, who won the world handball title with France and then moved to play for Qatar, has, with his business partner, developed the keffiyeh’s link to the World Cup by designing headdresses in the national colours of the 32 countries taking part.
Roine hopes the colourful scarves will become a “symbol’ of the games.
“One friend told me, you have made a vuvuzela for Qatar,” he said.
South Africa’s deafening vuvuzela plastic horns blew their way to worldwide notoriety with fans enthusiastically honking them at every goal.
Daily News