Madrid, Dec 1 (IANS): If you are a fan of Spanish football, it is possible to own balls with which players from great clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico score goals during La Liga matches.

La Liga is set to become the first competition in the world to make official goal-scoring balls available to fans, thanks to an innovative agreement with Gol-Ball.

The agreement will come into effect on January 8, 2023, when La Liga resumes after the end of the ongoing World Cup.

In professional football matches, more than a dozen balls are distributed around the field to avoid wasting time. When a ball goes out, a different one is immediately thrown in to resume play, and when a goal is scored, that ball is quickly returned to the centre of the field, and as play continues, gets intermingled with all the other balls located around the field.

Gol-Ball has disrupted football collectibles by developing a regulated patent-pending process to identify the balls with which goals are scored; something that no league in the history of professional football had until now, and even less to deliver it to fans, the Spanish league's organisers informed in a release.

La Liga is the first competition to deliver these balls to their fans, thanks to the Gol-Ball process, creating the concept of the "goal-scoring ball".

"Throughout my career as a footballer you would normally be given a ball only after scoring a hat-trick, but you were never sure it was the ball you actually scored any of the goals with. If we had been able to identify the goal-scoring ball, my colleagues and I would have wanted all of them. If this is a historic moment for us, then imagine what it could mean for a fan to keep the ball," Samuel Eto'o, La Liga's ambassador, was quoted as saying in the release.

Having access to historic and authenticated football collectibles was unthinkable for most and was, until now, a privilege for a few. La Liga is making it possible for the most valuable element of the game, the ball with which a goal is scored, to be in the hands of those that love the competition by offering the full official collection of physical Gol-Balls, at very affordable prices via fan engagement mechanisms that will be disclosed on January 8th.

"We replaced the auction and bidding of a few with the collaboration of many. We are proud that all our fans can have access to these collectibles, both in their physical and digital form. This is what Web3 inspires: If we contribute a little between many, we can achieve much more than when one single person puts it all," says Andres Rodriguez, Gol-Ball's CEO.

According to Gol-Ball's CTO Fede Giuliani, who has experience in four unicorns: "The concept of the goal ball did not exist, we invented and registered it through a series of patent applications that will allow fans around the world to have access to this new collectible. We have called it Gol-Ball."

"Gol-Ball has surprised the world by creating an official collection of goal-scoring balls on Web3 that is backed by a completely new and priceless object in the physical world: the goal-scoring ball. It's a bridge between the real world and the digital world. We pride ourselves at La Liga for innovating and offering our fans ways to feel more emotionally connected to their favourite clubs and idols," concludes Oscar Mayo, Executive General Director of La Liga.