Welcome to The Vault, a new series from MUNDIAL where we celebrate the artefacts, objects, iconic global products, and little bits of tat that make football history fizz with wonder. It could be anything from Predators to Kings, an exceptionally rare Inter Milan kit from the 80s or a football stamp from Guinea-Bissau. Balls, film posters, statues, fan memorabilia, bootleg shirts—anything that we think should be cherished.
Each week, we’ll interview someone connected to an object that we believe deserves to go into The Vault: forever enshrined and immortalised in an archive of joy. You know Jon-Paul Wheatley. The genius behind Jon-Paul's Balls, he creates the coolest footballs we've ever seen and documents the process as he goes. We simply had to speak to him about the greatest thing he has ever created: an adidas Predator-inspired football crafted using the leather of six different classic adi boots. Over three days of frantic stitching, Jon combined stripes and patterns from across decades of design to forge his masterpiece, which he told us all about…