I believe that you want to learn how to do seamless tiling; that is how the soccerball marks travel seamlessly across the ball.
Experimentation is key; because a spherical map is distorted, you need to "think" distorted...how will the map eventually fit onto the surface.
Now, foolish me from the U.S.--I thought you were trying to map a football as in "NFL football", in which case, cylindrical mapping of the attached image is the way to go.
My Best,
Gare
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