Watching Sunday’s World Cup ultimate, 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 A$3,200 ‘bisht’, a standard robe worn by males for weddings, graduations and official occasions — and it was made by Salem’s household firm.
The gesture has sparked worldwide debate on social media over whether or not it was acceptable.
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 did not know who they were for and I was stunned,” he instructed AFP of the second when the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, dressed Messi within the cloak.
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Salem recognised 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, mentioned Salem.
“At one stage there were dozens waiting outside the store”, he mentioned.
“They were nearly all Argentinians,” he added as he watched eight supporters of the brand new world champions sing their “Muchachos” (mates) anthem and take photos 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 were all happy when we saw that, it was a gift from one king to another king,” mentioned Mauricio Garcia as he tried on the cloak, however determined the value tag was too excessive to purchase.
Some commentators, predominantly European, criticised Messi’s shirt being coated for the trophy presentation.
But the second was welcomed by Arabic social media customers.
Salem and different Arab commentators defined the intention was to “honour” Messi and that the gesture had been misunderstood.
“When a sheikh dresses a person in a bisht, this means honouring and appreciating this person,” Salem mentioned.
It was a “very important moment” for Qatar because it seeks a World Cup publicity enhance, mentioned Carole Gomez, a professor of sports activities sociology on the University of Lausanne, in Switzerland.
“These pictures are widely spread about, conserved and reissued,” she mentioned.
Salem mentioned when World Cup officers went to his retailer “they wanted the lightest and most transparent fabric”.
“I was surprised because we are in winter, so it seems that the goal was to show the Argentine uniform and not cover it,” he mentioned.
While the bisht is worn in lots of Gulf nations, Al-Salem is the largest of about 5 Qatari producers, using about 60 tailors.
Each bisht takes per week to make and goes by way of a seven stage completion, with completely different employees including completely 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.
