One of the world’s top football teams swapped competitive matches for inflatable zorbs with a little help from a firm based in Ramsey.

Hundreds of millions of pounds worth of talent, including Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, were bouncing around in the inflatable balls at St George’s Park, in Staffordshire – at the Football Association’s state-of-the-art training facility.

The zorbs were provided as part of a bubble football session by firm Xtreme Events.

Head of development at Xtreme, Neville Nania, said: “We couldn’t believe it that the Barcelona first team showed up to use play a game using our equipment.

“They absolutely loved using our bubble footballs. This is just a massive profile for our company.”

Despite the club training for the new season, the match was run as an optional training session but this didn’t stop the players from being competitive.

Now a video posted by Barcelona on YouTube of the club playing, has been watched by more than 400,000 people since it was published last Friday (July 29).

According to Xtreme Events, it has now retired the zorb used by Messi so that the team can say he was the last person to have played in it.

Last year the company saw more than 40,000 people throughout the country take part in its events but, up to the start of July, it had already welcomed 41,000 people to its events and experiences.

It is anticipated that the company will reach 65,000 customers by the end of this year.

“We have grown significantly in terms of bookings and what we do as a business is coming together,” added Mr Nania.