A full year before the first ball is kicked in the FIFA World Cup™, Postbank has achieved its first highlight. 320 staff covered the playing area of Borussia Park in Mönchengladbach with around 142,000 balls, in the process securing a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. The Bank, based in Bonn, is using this unique image to kick off its activities as an Official National Sponsor of the FIFA World Cup™.

Dr. Wolfgang Klein, Managing Director of Retail Banking at Postbank, spoke to journalists in Mönchengladbach on Monday: “Young or old, everyone’s feet start to twitch when they see a soccer ball. The leather ball just has that magic." Postbank intends to make the most of this fascination. The ball, which bears Postbank’s colors and logo, is at the heart of the Bank’s communication activities for the FIFA 2006 World Cup. “In order to draw attention to our commitment in the most original way possible, from today, we will be giving out 1,000 balls in Germany every day,” said Klein. "We are already looking forward to the FIFA 2006 World Cup and are certain that just about every one of our more than twelve million customers will see themselves as national trainers over the next year,” Klein continued.

Time to start the ball rolling – a superior event
150,000 soccer balls, three container ships, 27 forty-foot containers, 10,125 boxes with a total weight of 86,000 kilograms, a helicopter, ten buses, two tractors, 40 container vessels, 40 trucks and 276 meters of roller conveyors – just some of the technical equipment used for Postbank’s kick-off.

Preparations for this event began a full six months ago. The high quality balls were commissioned by Adidas and manufactured in China – naturally using ethical production procedures. They were then shipped halfway around the world from Asia to Bremerhaven. From there, they were then taken on to Mönchengladbach in 40 trucks. Since the weekend, 40 people have been opening and emptying every box and placing the balls in a 30 x 30 meter grid.

Then, in the early morning of June 6, 320 Postbank employees from Bonn, Cologne and Dortmund set off to place the balls. The container box is opened as soon as it arrives. And they're off! A sea of Postbank-yellow balls floods the pitch. The staff spread out across the field and form teams. The pitch is split into eleven sectors and row by row is filled with balls from left to right. 28 staff work in each sector. 24 people in a “bucket chain” pass the balls down the line; two provide the chain with balls and two more put the balls down.

With eleven chains, it takes 29 seconds to complete a row with 309 balls. Covering the whole of the pitch with 477 rows of balls takes around four hours – at least that is the plan. The pitch has to then be cleared again by the early morning of June 7. After all, the German Soccer Federation, which made it possible for its premium partner to stage this event by letting them use the stadium, has to send the German national team onto the pitch to train for its match against Russia on June 8.