In 2010, an Argentinian businessman named Gustavo Miguens came up with an idea to merge two of the country's most entrenched sports: padel and football. Thus, padel was born.

Padbol also has similarities to volleyball and squash, attracting the attention of football superstars such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, James Rodriguez and Paul Pogba.

The rules of the game are almost identical to those of padel, with equal points, best-of-three sets and two-person team competition.

The court measures 10 meters long and 6 meters wide, with four walls and a maximum height of 2.5 meters. In cricket, the court measures 20×10 meters, with 3-meter high side walls and a 4-meter high back wall.

The circumference of the ball is very similar to the ball used in football, but the weight is slightly lighter than a regular football, about 380-400 grams. It must bounce a maximum of once in its own court, but players can touch the net when shooting and up to three times when passing the ball to the opponent's court.

The development of padbol has been slow but significant so far, says Nicolás Renedo, a representative of Padbol Internacional, the organization responsible for commercializing the sport, which aims to realize a dream that is still far away.

He told El Padel: "In 2010, we opened the first court in La Plata, near Buenos Aires. Little by little we developed in Argentina and soon the sport spread to other countries such as Spain through social media. At first they called our sport football tennis, but now people know what padbol means."

"We want to continue to develop, as we have done in Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. We still have a long way to go, but we have been doing the right things for a long time and our dream is that padbol can one day become an Olympic sport."

Renedo believes that in the coming years, padbol will continue to develop in European countries, among which Spain is a strong country. The UK has also joined the trend.

“For countries that don’t have a Mediterranean climate and a lot of rain, Padbol has an advantage in that it’s an indoor sport. It’s easy to coordinate because it only requires four players and there’s no need to buy anything because once you’re there, the clubs with approved pitches give you the ball to play with.

“Also, it’s a very social sport because you score a lot of points, so you feel like the protagonist.”

Among these growth areas, the World Cup in Brazil in November 2023 is a key event.